The Thing is Photoworks’s 30th Annual showcasing the work of emerging and established artists, contextualised through critical writing. Inspired by Aimé Césaire’s formulation 'colonisation = chosification', editor Diane Smyth drew together artists, writers and curators to consider how the camera’s commodifying gaze initiates and perpetuates the process of objectification.
Our intention with the publication’s reflective silver cover is to highlight its ’Thingification’ and to create an external gaze which frames the reader, evocative of the Situationist International’s journals and mass-produced mirrors as technologies of display. The cover’s bespoke typography is reminiscent of B-movies and horror stories which often narrate stories of disempowerment and resistance. The barcode printed prominently on the cover is also a nod to the theme of commodification explored within. Inside, clean layouts are interspersed with unusually large type sizes and thumbnail images that protrude into the text to create a playful reading experience.
Photoworks is a platform promoting photography to global audiences since 1995.
The materials of the publication were carefully selected to be sustainable and fully recyclable, in line with the themes of The Thing.
