Frances Hegarty - Point of View - 1996

Public art installation with:
x2 rows of x9 encapsulated Colour Vista prints from digital originals.
Each print 1005 x 4570 mm.
Installed: Heathrow Airport Terminal 1, Pier 4A, for 1 year.

Frances Hegarty - Point of View - public art installation view 1996
1/2: Frances Hegarty - Point of View - installation view, Heathrow Airport (Pier 4A, Dublin departures side)
Frances Hegarty - Point of View - public art installation view 1996
2/2: Frances Hegarty - Point of View - installation view, Heathrow Airport (Pier 4A, Dublin arrivals side).
 

For this work, Hegarty made photographs at Heathrow airport of eighteen air passengers travelling to or from Dublin. Large-format photographs of each subject "looking ahead" were anamorphically distorted before being printed at large scale for the installation.

For viewers on the Pier 4A travelators, the portraits appear optically correct at a distance. However, by the time the traveller gets close enough to read the name beside any given portrait, that subject's image has become grotesquely elongated. The work takes advantage of the travelling viewer's movement to create a dynamic tension between "seeing" and "reading" as ways of grasping the identity of the portrait subjects.

Project photographer: Bill Stephenson. Commissioned by the Public Art Development Trust, London.