So this is it,

error 404, the final show, the exhibition, the books, all in in one neat little package called a website.  It’s just too early to comprehend what it is exactly that we have experienced over the last 14 months, but the peculiarities, the losses, the realisations, the transitions will be with us for a very long time. We can all work from home, it’s the future, our homes are not home anymore since they mutated into the remote sites of virtual production. All the short-lived sickly enthusiasms of institutions and corporations that lost sight of our need to be human, creatures of habit, made up of many identities.  

The pandemic has given us a terrifying look into the future, a place where we have been for some time without really knowing it. Everything changed on March 23rd 2020, except for digital output and transmission. Google kept rolling and growing, Instagram and Facebook had a bumper time, force-fed apps emerged without hindrance. 

So what did we learn about photography that wasn’t there before? I am not sure. It may be that someone will one day quantify the relationship between the increases in transfer and the denial of subject. More social media, less socialising. For the majority of photographers however, it’s all familiar ground. We have been here for donkey’s years. The digital domain, the real home of photography. A young student asked me recently why it was necessary to make a print?  Each of my answers was met with, why? I was on a losing wicket and just accepted that it was legacy and assessment. The last Martin Parr show in Manchester had all of the early work, black and white prints in 20x16 frames in an attempt to dupe us into believing that these objects had inherent value, the work of a craftsperson, only one like it, hours of labour, shame to lose it. They were digital prints.  A proper con. 

But somehow we need it. The distance to be physical, tangible proximity, human presence, reverie, a celebration of something made.

Error 404 is exactly that, a celebration of things made. The only thing that’s missing is you, us, and it.

Tim Williams
Course Leader