Portraits by Waiters
contains images of Sveinn Fannar Jóhannsson posing in front of his own
camera in different rooms, on different occasions. When reading the
photos one will follow his private daily life and may soon notice that
he appears as bored, isolated and eager at the same time. In his
exploration of photography as a means of documentation and the
contemporary use and status of the medium, Jóhannsson has created a
visual diary of himself. During an eight-week residency in Cologne,
Germany, Jóhannsson asked waiters and waitresses to capture his portrait
while eating dinner. By posing in front of the camera Jóhannsson
reverses the role of the artist and the role of the photographic sitter.
The operator is replaced by an anonymous person who, uncontrolled and
forced, is capturing a portrait of the artist
whom consequently becomes the subject of the image. In this sense he
removes himself from authorship and demonstrates art as a process and
transformation rather than an outcome of the photograph as an aesthetic
object of art.