Retreating Door

Small, sometimes barely noticeable alterations to the doors of the house where Roman Ondák was living at the time the pictures were taken form the basis of this four-part photographic series. “Blind Door” shows a door whose handle has been removed without leaving a trace; “Descending Door” shows one that has been taken off its hinges and leant against the frame; “Retreating Door” shows another that has been dismantled and shifted into the room behind; and finally, “Submerged Door” shows a door, clearly originally from a taller frame, that has been cut down and hung in a smaller one. These apparently found and banal images turn out to have been deliberately manipulated, focusing attention on the theme of three-dimensional perception in the two-dimensional medium of photography and on the parallels between the picture framed by the camera the door framed by the doorframe. With these shifts and interventions, Ondák creates a viewing experience that calls representations of reality and its very representability into question.