This is a selection from the series Hanging on the Wall, an ongoing work exploring the formal relation between museum guards and the aesthetic space that they inhabit. The photographs have been processed in such a way to flatten and erase the distinction between the guard and their work, in order to incorporate and level both into a single pure form. This flattening further comments on the anonymous, often under appreciated labor that keeps museums running. In erasing the distinction between art and guard, the viewer is forced to engage with the guards presence, to acknowledge their integrality to the museum, both aesthetically as form and as labor.
When the guard is brought into focus, the experience of a museum changes for the viewer. The act of observing, of a visitor engaging with a work of art, becomes troubled by the presence the guard engaged in the act of observing the observer. In the presence of a museum guard the museum goer becomes self-conscious, conscious of their physical presence within an enclosed space and conscious of the act of observation itself. Questions begin to arise in the mind of the viewer: Have I looked at this work for too long, or not long enough? Am I standing too close, or should I move to the next room? The guards apparent boredom, or perhaps nonchalance, in the face of the artwork forces us to ask what viewership is worth and whether novelty is the primary force at play.
As a philosophy student, Jake Romm focuses primarily on aesthetics and the ways in which our world is mediated through images. Jake Romm’s writing and photography have appeared in The New Inquiry, The Forward, Humble Arts Foundation, Loosen Art Gallery, Yogurt Magazine, Dodho Magazine, Fisheye Gallery, Phroom, Across the Margin and Reading The Pictures.