big nothing 71, 2021

The issue of what, if anything, is represented in an image is alluded to in the title of De Haan’s series big nothing (2013-16), implying that we might be looking into the void. How can a photograph of nothing exist? 

Literally, of course, it can’t. Even in big nothing, we see visual phenomena recorded photographically and perceived optically, even though what we see might not seem to relate to the ‘real’ world around us.

Another aspect of abstraction comes into play here, the relationship between form and formlessness.

De Haan’s big nothing series explores the boundaries of form and our capacity to perceive its existence against a background of formlessness.

The amorphous shapes in these images exist at the threshold of emergence and disappearance. In terms of the digital construction of the images, intriguingly, the shape contains fewer data than the surrounding space. – Derek Horton