Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery Collection. Gift of the Artist, 2019.
© Adad Hannah. Used by permission. Photo: Adad Hannah.
In All Is Vanity and All Was Vanity, Adad Hannah is inspired by Charles Allan Gilbert’s drawing All Is Vanity (1892), which depicts a young woman seated at a vanity table surrounded by cosmetics and toiletries, all of which double as the skull and teeth of a momento mori. In Hannah’s adaptation, the mirror is replaced by an empty opening, and twins are cast to fill the roles of the subject and her reflection. This encourages us to see representation (the reflection) as having a life of its own. These two works come from a series which reveals how time and notions of reproduction are inseparable from conversations about photography.
Discussion: Consider what the word ‘reproduction’ means. Is a photograph a reproduction?
Activity: Both Adad Hannah and Charles Allan Gilbert play with our perception of an image by making one thing look like another. Try to create a scene that tricks the eye in this way and makes the viewer look closely.