Fiona ONES, “Just Like You, But Different” (2017-18)
A.I. Gallery, London
The Munich-based artist Fiona Ones, who is a graduate of Parsons, has been mining an archive of around 7,000 found photographs and producing her own manipulated images. She transforms the snapshots of ordinary life in Germany from the 1920s to the 1950s by honing in on telling details, drawing attention to the way a woman is seated or a hand gesture, then blanking out the background, sometimes adding tiny drops of gold paint. Each is unique and at first glance the delicate monochrome images look like drawings.
“I was in a flea market and a woman came up to me and said ‘I have something for you,’” she explains of the source material. The artist kept some untouched but the rest form the basis of her series “Just Like You, But Different.”
She tells artnet News that she has discovered another trove, this time in France, this one “about slavery and colonialism.” Once again, a collector wants her to mine his archive.
Unique works at Photo London range from £800 to £1,350 ($1,000 to $1,820).
