"The Oval Office 7/8th Scale ""Johnson kept abreast of the news with a teletype machine and three screen simultaneously"" Lyndon Baynes Johnson Museum & Library, 2012  by Elizabeth Shear  The Oval Office 7/8th Scale is not a photograph of the Oval Office, but a photograph of a model. Removed from its original referent (the Oval Office in the White House in Washington, DC during Johnson's Presidency), the photograph provides interplay between depiction, reality and assumed knowledge. Photographing is just another method of copying (here an already copied model) and the result is not an image of historic significance, but rather a text that provides a chance to look at representation, its history and its role in our understanding of the past. Postmodernism appropriates the past in fragments and Elizabeth Shear's work borrows directly from history's representation. But as postmodernist works become divorced from their actual historical moments because of conflicting information and signs within them, this photograph divorces us from the moment in history when Lyndon Banes Johnson was in office. The museum (through its model) provides a chance to experience what is no longer even a possibility: a glimpse into the past and a surrogate that simulates the experience we can't have. The Oval Office 7/8th Scale becomes a critical examination of contemporary society's willingness to accept the simulacra in place of the authentic as a real and useful model for learning about the thing it represents. Elizabeth Shear holds a BFA from the Art Institute of Boston and has exhibited throughout the Boston area. Her book, The Shape of Things, is forthcoming. for more, please visit www.elizabethshear.com"
{"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image ExifOffset": "38", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated"}