Picture Post No. 11 The Playground

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Tessa den Uyl and Martin Cohen

'Playing'. Original photo, title and date unknown, by Alexsandr Malin

In this deceptively simple image a simple gesture accentuates not only a perception of an optical play about reality, but also leads on to a vision about a virtual world.

We enter the paradox of pick and choose.

The shift between figure and background position produces contradictory responses. The object - the car being used as a kind of toy - transforms and breaks the coherence between the object and ourselves. Evidently, one value must have another value.

We can be flexible: the playground is free to enter. Humour has the capacity to reveal ‘our will of absence’ - to guide things beyond their ascribed function. We laugh alongside our own rigidity.

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