“When looking at the contact sheets from the archives of great photographers, you will quickly notice that the selection outlining which photos will be chosen for publication is marked by the placement of small dots or, more radically, by crossing out rejected images. Either way, all pictures taken from an analogue 36-shot film strip remain visible on the contact sheet. In this sense, the way Margiela avoids the visibility of a representation is even more radical. One associates domestic, everyday protective measures with people closing the shutters on their windows in the evenings, to protect themselves from strangers’ gazes. Margiela seemingly applies such a protective measure to his own depiction by transferring the motif of a glare shield and using it as a protective screen in the photo.
The title conveys that this creation is a self-portrait. Were it ‘Untitled’, the pictorial object might be regarded as a collage or montage. From an art-historical point of view, the applied, found artificial wood immediately causes the image to appear as a trompe l’oeil, as an illusion of the eye, as a deception of the senses, as playing with reality — it becomes a painting. You have to look and scrutinise what you see to discern that it stems from a different reality. In this alternative context, the found and previously discarded material is redefined and glorified as an image. It is representation preceding a representation. A surreal pictorial principle. A portrait of itself.”
– Friedrich Meschede, translated from German by Katerine Niedriger