The TV Sitters

Natasha Desai discusses Olivier Culmann’s thoughtful gaze over the banality yet relatability of the act of watching television.

- Natasha Desai

Two weeks after tragedy struck the World Trade Center, Olivier Culmann flew to New York to photograph the city and the aftermath. “Everyone who looked up at the ruins of the towers was shocked and I started photographing them looking up at the remains rather than the site itself.” In this way, he was able to tell a poignant story in a less obvious, more tangential manner, entirely through expressions.

It was this same approach that Culmann used in a body of work titled Watching TV. Instead of focusing on the subject matter of the television shows, Culmann’s gaze was turned on the viewers themselves. “As a consumer of television myself, I always feel like a passive spectator of the world rather than an actor in the world I’m living in,” says Culmann. “While I photographed the people, I would also shoot the television sets themselves to see what place they occupied in the various homes.”