Eric van Kampen

Buddleia is the first self published photobook by Eric van Kampen. The images featured in this publication were taken in Dublin City between 2011-2015 using an analogue film camera. This is the first time these images have been made available as the artist chose not to publicise his work online during this period, in preference for keeping a personal archive.

The subject of the work is in essence an attempt to challenge, by means of the photobook, how we grant access to our images via social media and the level to which this form of instantaneous sharing is mindful of a predetermined audience. The photobook in this sense has proved for the artist a legitimate means to challenge how we consider an audience for our imagery as a precondition to creating images. These factors of familiarity are in Buddliea determined by less certain terms or criteria as the viewer is anonymous and their sense of familiarity to the imagery is based on the scope of their own knowledge for the city as an entity that can be ‘known’. Perceived in this way the city of Dublin becomes the subject of a potential knowledge and the means by which people decipher a sense of truth based on the familiarity of a recent past.¹