Born 1957, Brisbane, Australia
In the same way that karaoke allows would-be singers to personalize and interpret songs within its compositional restraints, Gary Carsley creates his 'draguerrotypes'. His subject however is not popular song, it is the subject itself.
His seemingly photographic works depict intarsia wich in its turn depict culturally and historically significant parks and other scenery. But when we look at the images carefully, not only do we see that they are not in fact photographs, but also that the level of craftmanship that would be required to achieve this much detail on such a scale is almost inhuman.
The works seem to be trying to convey an uncertainty about it's subject. It raises questions about the proces of making a photo, a framed fracture of reality, of a piece of craftmanship (the intarsia), wich in itself is a mimicry of a park(both in material and subject). The park in its turn is an artificially constructed landscape.
