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Jackie Nickerson: Terrain

DLK review

For me there are two inter-related aspects in particular that make this series of African photographs exceptional; they aren’t straighforward portraits and they rely on obscuring. Ninety-nine per cent of photography is ‘in your face’ so it’s always a special buzz when photographs aren’t straightforward to read. These pictures speak eloquently about how individuals closely interact with ‘things’ in everyday life.

Objects, mundane, seemingly inconsequential, actually are the bits that occupy a significant part in our lives, we have a fundamental relationship with them. And in this case they might not be the cool or desirable objects beloved of the Western world but they are absolutely not incidental to the people in these pictures, they are central to them. These are less about ‘who’ and more ‘how’ we are as human beings in the world.