ABOUT the Random-Series

From 2005 to 2013, while on travels with not much more than a laptop and a camera, Sebastian Mayer called himself cheekily, an “electronically equipped drifter.” The photographer has lived and worked in Berlin, Liverpool, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York and Japan, where he stayed for seven years in Tokyo and Kyoto. After nine years abroad, he returned to Berlin in 2014.

In his travels, Sebastian collected moments in time, place and psyche. These captured moments are distilled from a wider autobiographical narrative and geography that all together form the framework of his current artistic work.

The artist has initiated a creative process to combine and rearrange the photographs he has collected as unique visual fragments. Each pair of images has been selected by finding varying degrees of tension, either in form or content between two seemingly “random” images, and this visual phrasing, or relationship between the images, has become a visual poem— which the photographer refers to as ‘visual haiku.’ The resulting combinations, presented in tableaux of two images per print, have led to the series’ paradoxical titling: “Random.” The images are supposed to appear random in combination but upon viewing the pairs are all but.

The juxtaposition presented by these ‘visual haiku’ initiate a range of pivots in both thought and action, allowing for alternate trajectories along which we may engage with the visual cues or form of each print.

In the current moment, we look at more images than ever, perhaps even faster than ever, and this peculiar inertia no doubt has influenced our way of looking. As we are compelled to refresh our increasingly homogenous visual environment and haphazardly discard what was ‘previous’, we are rewarded and punished— new connections are denied lest we seek them out or they are presented to us. Living with(in) this inertia, distillation is fraught and so here, Mayer’s juxtaposition as counter-point, and as counter-media, is welcome. Mayer’s “Random” combinations and the stories that unfold, affront not only as a narrative-launchpad or narrative-mirror, but also as a gesture towards a third way. A way which does not return us to the old way of looking but rather facilitates engagement with the goal of presenting a new document worthy of our chaotic reality. Retreat is not feasible strategy and so, as Mayer commented in a recent interview:

“The more you look, the more you will find.”