Printed Motion Picture Acquisitions
Friday Morning Coffee Credits
Archivist Obsesions
Eric Stephanian
Eric Stephanian
ISBN 979-12-82682-10-7
The project began with the idea of exploring new human phenotypes. In the past, similar attempts to categorize people were often based on race, which is no longer relevant today. My interest is different. I want to observe whether our species is gradually producing new types of men, shaped not by race but by psychological conditions. Human bodies are constantly changing over time, often without us noticing it. These changes are both physiological and psychological. I believe that psychological conditions influence our physiology even more strongly. Our behavior slowly transforms our bodies. For this project I selected models according to specific anatomical and expressive features. I was interested in how each individual manifests his psychological presence through his body. The body becomes a visible expression of how a person exists and acts in the world. Subject represent a new phenotype of contemporary man.
The book itself is intentionally constructed like a technical field dossier. The translucent vellum sheets serve two purposes. Practically, they protect the photographic prints. Conceptually, they create a second layer of discovery for the viewer. Each vellum sheet contains only the name of the subject. When the viewer lifts the sheet, the body beneath is revealed more clearly. The project is meant to make the viewer aware that human bodies are not static. They are constantly evolving, slowly and often invisibly. Whether we call it evolution or mutation, our species is changing through psychological influences. This work attempts to observe those changes in the present moment.
New Phenotypes is a glimpse into the unstable relationship between the body, identity, and the systems through which the self is observed and interpreted. While the work appears at first to adopt the language of classification, cataloguing new phenotypes of contemporary men, it simultaneously exposes the subjective nature of such observation. The bodies presented in the book are not neutral specimens, they are surfaces upon which psychological presence, cultural influence, and unconscious forces become visible.