Eleanor Macnair: Photographs Rendered in Play–doh
Photographs Rendered in Play-Doh started by Macnair on a whim in August 2013 with no expectation of reaching a wide audience. The images are produced late at night using Play-Doh, a chopping board, a highball glass as a rolling pin and a blunt Ikea knife. Each photograph takes several hours to reproduce, paring the image down to just form and colour, before being shot the next morning then disassembled back into the Play-Doh pots. The works themselves no longer exist and the Play-Doh is re-used for future renderings, so these photographs are all that remain. The photographs reproduced in this exhibition range from the well-known and iconic to lesser-known images by contemporary photographers.
‘On the surface, photographs can condense complex ideas and present them in a straightforward visual language. I take this a step further and pare them down to almost nothing, just form and colour. They are what they are. Photographs Rendered in Play-Doh. It’s my strange tribute to photography.’

Original photograph: Charles, Vasa, Minnesota, 2002 from ‘Sleeping by the Mississippi’ by Alec Soth
Archival pigment print

Original photograph: The Way Home from Life and Death in Hackney (c. 2000) by Tom Hunter
Archival pigment print

Original photograph: Untitled (1975) from the series ‘On a Good Day’ by Al Vandenberg
Archival pigment print

Original photograph: Gypsy, Lourdes, France, 1971 by Josef Koudelka
Archival pigment print

Original photograph: Untitled # 20, 2000-03, by Bill Henson
Archival pigment print

Original photograph: detail of Aerial Suspension, 2009 from the conjurations series by Clare Strand
Archival pigment print

Original photograph: from ‘Woman’ 1971 by Akira Sato
Archival pigment print

Original photograph: Child with toy grenade, NYC, 1962 by Diane Arbus
Archival pigment print

Original photograph: Nuit de Noël, 1963 by Malick Sidibe
Archival pigment print

Original photograph: Patti Smith, 1979 by Robert Mapplethorpe
Archival pigment print

Original photograph: Young boy, Gondeville, Charente, France, 1951 by Paul Strand
Archival pigment print
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Original photograph: Doe Eye Vogue Cover, January 1, 1950, model: Jean Patchett by Erwin Blumenfeld
Archival pigment print
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Original photograph: Untitled, 1977 by Guy Bourdin
Archival pigment print
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