Fiona Tan

They are photographs of strangers, yet we’ve see them countless times: toddlers grinning from foamy bathtubs, teenagers awkwardly showing off their first party dresses, granddads cuddling newborns. Local variations aside, they could be found pretty much anywhere, stuck on the yellowing cardboard pages of hefty photo albums. These pictures form Fiona Tan’s primary material for “Vox Populi.” In this series of wall pieces and books begun in 2004, the Indonesian-born, Amsterdam-based artist has selected and rearranged images she sourced in locations as varied as Norway, Switzerland, Tokyo, Sydney and London, each time creating a multifaceted portrait of the place through the photographs of the people who live, or lived, in each locale. The work is made from of copies of images taken from hundreds of photo albums loaned from Londoners, and continues Tans work exploring representation and the issue of how we choose to represent ourselves.