Catching Fairies
Catching Fairies 1
Catching Fairies 1
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Catching Fairies
1996
C-type Photograph
45cm x 65cm
Collishaw finds it curious that people so often record and document things going on around them, and can't quite appreciate the existence of something unless they capture and preserve it.
Catching fairies was meant as an allegorical expression of this thought.
In the images, Collishaw stands to his thighs in muddy water vainly attempting to capture fairies in his fishing net. These beings by definition are ephemeral, which makes his pursuit futile and absurd: to capture them would be to destroy them.