What, in the age of autofocus, is the point of painterly representation? White’s mundane subjects – lamps, glasses, and ladders – would have been any amateur photographer’s favourites less than twenty years ago. Once the staples of life photography, glossy, black-and-white shots of mirrors, flowers, and junk miscellany today elicit a vague, objectless nostalgia.
But that White’s images are oil paintings – so photorealistic that the eye needs a second glance to recover from a deception that’s of its own making – throws the nature of that “life” into question. Paint that does this to a pile of plastic coat hangers contends with any reality.
