Presidency 2008

Thomas Demand made this photograph, Presidency, of a paper model he constructed of the Oval Office. The image is large scale, like a panorama, and the attention to detail is astonishing. The photograph's surface is smooth, almost clinical. Demand’s method involves an intense process of constructing and photographing, which in itself is obscured, like a magic trick. The play of light, the soft sheen of the carpet, and the folds in the curtains create a kind of tension between what is real and what is fabricated. The picture plane seems stable but somehow also elusive, inviting contemplation on the nature of power, illusion, and representation. I’m reminded of Jeff Wall, another artist using photography to create images that evoke a sense of staged reality, asking us to question the authenticity of what we see. Demand, like Wall, blurs the line between reality and artifice, leaving us to ponder the truth.