I’m pleased to announce that my photographs of each and every chair at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York are now available as an interactive archive on Flickr.

A little background: as a graduate student at “the Workshop,” I became interested in the philosophical implications of photography and images. Among the issues I wanted to address were how photos, even the photos of objects in a characterless white space, imbued those objects with personality.

The photos intensified the human characteristics of certain chairs; viewers described some as “happy,” others as “sad.” The images became advocates for the interaction between the inanimate objects and the viewers projected emotions.

I was also investigating how photographs could act as substitutes for or reminders of experience. My act of photographing these chairs became proof of the passage of linear time – my time at the Visual Studies Workshop.

As such, the photos are numbered #001 through #521, the numbers representing the order of my photographing them. Flickr mirrors this notion by presenting the most recent images first.

Finally, this archive of photographs exists as an experimental history of the Visual Studies Workshop. The Workshop is a quirky institution whose existence has spanned four decades because of the contributions of hundreds of different students, staff, faculty, and friends.

Everyone – Visual Studies Workshop-related or not – is encouraged to add tags and leave comments on the chairs themselves or what thoughts they inspire. Click the logo below to visit the archive.