SPARE PARTS: OLD BOXES

182nd RHA Annual Exhibition, 2012, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin, Ireland

Edition of 10, Silver Gelatin Prints, printed Guillaume Geneste, Paris  28 X 28 cm .

Artist statement

Old spare spectacle parts, in old cardboard boxes, from Stein Opticians, the practice which I shared with my late father Mendel Stein. As with the “Loss and Memory” series of photographs made after the death of my parents, I find myself again emptying out a building, instead of their home, the cupboards and drawers of Stein Optician’s, my late Father Mendel Stein’s Opticians Practice. Finding boxes of spare sides and fronts from the Old Shop, with the window the shape of an eye, located on Harcourt Road, Dublin. Those boxes moved with us to the new Practice, around the corner to it’s home  on Grantham Street, some 20 years ago. It is now time to open them, keep or discard their contents as I finally close the doors in December 2013. They represent another time, when nothing was ever wasted, old frames were stripped down for spare parts. I remember these boxes from my childhood visiting the Old Shop. Old thick cardboard, well used.