MAX KANDHOLA

ILLUSTRATION OF LIFE

August 26 - October 13, 2002
Contact Sheet 118


For the past 10 years, Max Kandhola has been creating haunting images of death, decay and loss. Having experienced the death of both parents, a brother and a close personal friend, the artist has used his photography as a method for processing grief. Illustration of Life confronts us with the trauma of seeing the body deteriorate. Kandhola's detached and clinical gaze allows us to view in intimate detail a process, which fills us with fear.
In the two years leading up to his father's death Kandhola spent much of his time in the hospital at his father's bedside, documenting traces of hair, blood, urine samples, and various body parts, including hands, feet, and eyes, both closed and open. In carefully editing this large body of work the artist presents us with a series of moments to pause and look at the reality of death.

Ear I, 1998

Max Kandhola on his work: "...when I look deep within the photographs, death is close, so close that I can almost smell, feel, and even touch it. The images were made in the brief moments before and just after the death of my father. Death has been captured. The framing is deliberate and precise as the need to get closer intensifies, to go beneath the skin, back to a state of belonging that is being slowly but inexorably denied. The skin, the hair, the tone of the whole mass will be imprinted indefinitely in my memory. His eyes fixed towards the camera lens go beyond, into death, even further, into a place, which I do not know."