Unidentified Backgrounds
2004
Series of five Lambda prints, 108 × 80 cm each
Installation view of “Unidentified Backgrounds”, 2004
One of a series of five Lambda prints from “Unidentified Backgrounds”, 2004
Installation view of “Unidentified Backgrounds”, 2004
One of a series of five Lambda prints from “Unidentified Backgrounds”, 2004
One of a series of five Lambda prints from “Unidentified Backgrounds”, 2004
“The five photographs which Patrick Ward includes in his series Unidentified Backgrounds reveal precisely that; anonymous landscapes in which nothing much seems to be taking place. They are technically rather poor, while the one thing they have in common is an unusually wide expanse of sky; they might be the very negation of narrative. And yet these images once played a staring role in one of the most popular contemporary narrative codes, since they are snap shots of UFOs – except that Ward has digitally removed the flying objects, leaving the the now mysteriously mute landscapes. […] This it seems, is truly narration’s point zero: stripped down to virtually nothing, it has the perverse effect of stimulating the narrative instinct precisely where it is most powerful: in the audiences imagination.”
—John Stathatos
Ways of Telling: Photography and Narrative,
Thessalonki Museum of Photography, 2004, p32–3