Caravans, Berwick-upon Tweed

Dan Graham

Caravans, Berwick-upon Tweed, 1997

Artwork text

One of Graham’s key works is his photo-text article Homes for America of 1966, in which he critically classified types of serial housing in the suburbs of New York on the basis of such features as style, color, and vestibule in relation to Minimal Art. The photographs he took for his study were originally presented in a slide show and subsequently as color prints. This photograph of 1996 shows a trailer home settlement at the sea in Berwick-upon-Tweed, England near the border of Scotland. Graham makes reference to his nomadic life as an artist and to the mobility of society in general. In contrast to the earlier photographs, close-ups as a rule that show details and include the residents, this picture was shot at a great distance and from a height, with no people in it. In these photographs the artist again disregards sophisticated techniques or processing – like a “photo-tourist”. The photograph appeared for the first time in an exhibition which juxtaposed the work of Dan Graham with that of a younger artist, Andrea Zittel. Zittel displayed her Living Units, mobile spaces custom-made for the respective collector.