The image controls the viewer

The work of Eva Teppe is a collection of images that capture human behaviour in photos, films and videos. They show moments from everyday life, moments that people previously did not realize existed. The viewer cannot grasp why they exist, because the image is presented without a context. They seem like fragments found by chance, details that nobody would want to claim.

This image-without-context determines the role of the onlooker to a large degree, because the image abstracted from its usual setting becomes fixed in the onlooker’s mind. There the image operates like a virus, infesting and taking possession of the onlooker’s most private domain: insecurities. He or she notices this all too late and can no longer regain a dissociative distance. His or her certainties wither away, unmasking a pseudo-autonomy. This elicits a sense of being betrayed by the image – the instant the images appear in front of one’s eyes, one becomes an involuntary accomplice in what is going on in the image and rendered helpless.

The images of Eva Teppe break with the tradition of the free-willing, personal perspective that has nestled itself as the norm in art since the dawn of Modernism and entails the onlooker imbuing what is looked at with meaning (and conveniently equates this with the actual content of the world). Eva Teppe’s images undermine this artificial certitude that humankind, with haughty pride, has constructed. In Eva Teppe’s presentations it is not the viewer who controls the image, but the image that controls the viewer.

Henk Visch