ABSTRACT
Florian Einfalt, photographer and CGI artist, created this image when he was an undergraduate design student at Georg Simon Ohm University of Applied Sciences, Nuremberg, in 2011. Students on this undergraduate course specialize in creating images, which use both photography and computer generated imagery (CGI). This image comprises a traditional photograph of a desert scene with two additional elements, the tricycle and submarine, which have been simulated with computer software. Note that the tricycle is the same recognizable design from the cover of the inuential 1976 exhibition catalogue William Eggleston’s Guide. John Szarkowski, former curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the American photographer Eggleston are recognized for having successfully relocated ‘vernacular’ colour photography in an art gallery context. Eggleston’s iconic tricycle represents a particular type of colour documentary photography from America in the 1970s and 1980s. In Einfalt’s work the tricycle, abandoned within a desert scene, provocatively implies the death of photography. The title Desert Change points to another reading: that of change. The photography industry is changing with the invention of new technologies and it is important to consider the question: where is photography now?
