Photographie Métrique

The Charles H. Scott Gallery is pleased to present Photographie Métrique an exhibition of work by Vancouver-based artist Antonia Hirsch. The exhibition consists of a series of photographic portraits in which the subjects were asked to estimate the length of a metre. The series was produced in France during an artist’s residency and is informed by Hirsch’s interest systems of quantification.

Methods of measurement form an integral part of trade transactions, which in turn represent an elemental form of human interaction and social behaviour. The French Revolution is widely considered as the inauguration of the modern era and the modern nation state. This is partly due to the French National Assembly’s efforts to implement standardization across that nation. This endeavour included the development of the metre – a measurement free of any imperial connotations, based on purely ‘scientific’ premises. Once established, these standards allowed trade to flourish within the state’s borders and thus increased its economic authority. This type of standardization prefigures the strategies that are now summarized under the term ‘globalisation’.

The portrait subjects were chosen randomly and photographed in front of a neutral background. Through the gesture of estimation, the hand is revealed as the site where individual imagination and an assumed shared value – such as the metre – are negotiated. The differences between each person’s estimate of the metre questions the validity of any standard as a truly shared notion.

Concurrent with this exhibition, Anthropometrics, a related project by Antonia Hirsch, will be on view at the Vancouver Public Library and throughout the streets of Vancouver as part of the Group Search project.