Shoulder to Shoulder (2009-2011)
EJ Major works with both digital and analogue technologies to create photographic constructs that are, and are not what they seem. These pieces aim to challenge the veracity of the photographic portrait finding an authenticity in a notion of self-portraiture that involves acting. Referencing both historical events and characters as well as those from popular culture, individual works have a narrative content but the work is predominantly concerned with ideas. The aim is to construct visually arresting images that can also be read.
Over the last few years the artist has become interested in protest. The Suffragette movement provides a historical context for the performance and investigation of protest today, a fixed vantage point from which to explore the myriad issues at play in contemporary society. It also acts as counterpoint to a sense of confusion, a confusion born of fatigue at the information overload that surrounds the globalized internet generation.
Major says: ‘Today awareness has become a stand-in for knowing. We are bombarded with cues for action, but with so many cues we can’t decide which action path to take. Besides, the cues just keep on coming. They coalesce with all the other triggers of the 21st century. Consumer cues vie with personal directives and somewhere in the maelstrom we seek to find meaning.”
In all the artists driving concerns remain constant: an exploration of the individual as a physical and psychological collage; a study of the ways in which we are simultaneously created and self-creating, of the way our worlds and our selves entwine.
The series is available as limited edition prints. Please see Editions.