Alain Paiement Analysis.

Canadian artist born in 1960 in Montreal, his work consists of photography in the form of installations, sculptures and photo montage. This photograph 'Constellation (Squat)', 1998, a copy right print of a photo montage, I can see that the edges aren't straight which shows where different photographs of the same thing just taken of the different sections have been put together to create the image of the room or squat. The themes of Paiement's work involve geography, architecture, topography and construct the vision, I can see this because of how the image has been constructed to the realistic view but slightly out of place and wonky which could represent the mess on the rooms floor, the photographs have been taken from a birdseye view which shows the mess in the architecture as well as the shape and construction of the room itself. The content of this photograph goes deeper, Paiement states that the naturalness of living habits is captured in a contrasted sense of unnaturalness in this piece, he describes it as 'infinite', and a 'confusion we do not always face in our lives'. I can interpret this as the photograph presenting as unusual way of living which humans are not familiar with in a stereotypical sense but something that makes us think outside of the norm because this living condition and all of the booze cans and rubbish seen is the way some people are forced to live unnaturally. It addresses moral issues because no one should have to live like this but in terms of economics and the value of money in certain European and American cultures this is an issue. These interpretations and value of meaning are quite hidden, I wouldn't have been able to suss this out without reading Paiement's actual input and addressing of the meaning (artoronto.ca). There is no action taking place but we get the sense that there has been because of the clothes, the ash from the cigarettes which somebody must have smoked and cans that somebody must have drunk, we get the sense somebody lives there and this symbolises a horrible and unnatural way of habitat.

The piece on a whole is framed from birds eye because this shows every object in the room clearly and the amount of space a person has to move in there, also because it is a good way to piece a montage together, each photograph taken from the same up high angle means the squares fit together properly because if it was a long shot of normal height, the squares all being the same size wouldn't work because of the perspective being different, but by this view the perspective and angle of each photograph fits with the way we look at the actual photograph. I can see lots of squares that fit geometrically together, this is the individual photographs being placed and the actual tiles on the floor which compositionally relate to the placing of each photograph. The patterns I see are stripes and lines on the floor and on the radiator, lots of smaller shapes in the rubbish which are dotted around in certain  parts of the photograph, the colour is also quite neutral focusing mainly of browns and whites of various tones, it has a rusty colour scheme about it. The arrangement of this photograph is pleasing and keeps related to the content because of the squares, straight lines and jagged look that keeps it altogether and symbolises the mess.

The photograph has been planned but I imagine the positioning of everything exactly was spontaneous and placed according to what looked best and what objects could cause mess and relate to a human living in these conditions. The camera has taken photographs of this same scene repeatedly and put them together, all  of the images are completely in focus. The image hasn't been enhanced it has been kept exactly the way it is seen to the eye. It is a digital image not a darkroom one.

The mood of this work is quite grim it reminds me of when I visited the warehouse for my photographs because of the mess I saw of the floor, I felt that I could take photographs of this from a birds eye view and in terms of tiles and bricks ect. I could relate it to Paiement's work in geometrical sense in the composition and the rubble and materials of less value being used (broken, shattered), I was inspired to produce this on the same scale or smaller because I knew what sort of rubble I could get photographs of in this place and currently felt they could work better on a smaller scale because of the lack of location to take a clear birds eye shot. The words abandoned, messy, unclean, broken, shattered all spring to mind when I look at this piece and I can relate to the theme with this because of my previous location inside the warehouse but also outside of it.