264. Camera (Kamera)

264. Camera (Kamera), 2026, Öl auf Leinwand, 30 × 40cm

This is the second painting of a camera that I have made. It is a little bigger than the first one. It has been more enjoyable the second time around. It is more approachable as a theme. The first time I painted a camera I was always thinking about photography and its history and what an image is and all sorts of big philosophical questions. There was also an irony to the action of painting a camera. Things are normally the other way around. This time the object itself is more present to me, in its tactility, it’s appeal to the sense of touch.

The moments that remind me how important it is to pause, reflect, and make room for other ways of seeing usually come from perhaps art, culture, literature, and music. They can slow things down a little, giving us headspace back, time to notice, question, and imagine differently to our past experience. I have met many counter-cultural painters who seemed to work from exactly that generous and questioning spirit, where it is not about reaction and big impact but rather the small moments.

Nonetheless in 2026, I am more aware than ever of how easily people can be swept up by forces larger than themselves. I remember reading the history of the dancing madness of the Middle Ages in Europe, where whole groups seemed to be caught in a shared frenzy. Whether driven by illness, fear, social pressure, or the influence of a powerful charismatic cult figure, the phenomenon seems easy to imagine these days. However, maybe Adorno thought the same thing when he witnessed Beatlemania in the 1960s. Spectacle.