Paparazzi Ethnography

1/8: Passing through the Oslo airport, looking at an advertisement for Reinertsen consulting firm hanging inside the domestic terminal. Resting two meters above the floor, rising another 3 meters in height and nearly 4 meters in length, the image looms over passers-by and is recognizable at a distance of 20 meters.

The advertisement provides a contrasting experience to other large-scale commercial images inside the terminal, most of which are visible at eye-level and similar in size to a movie theater poster, as in the banner advertisement directly under the Reinersten image.



In addition to unusual size, the Reinersten image caught my attention for depicting an offshore oil rig. The photographic realism has been altered through computer design, giving the impression of an artist’s familiarity with color and brush stroke.



Above is a close-up perspective. It is what I saw when walking up close to one side of the image. At this distance, I experienced perceptual stimulation through what appears to be the uneven strokes of the paint brush.  I experienced a sense of touch, or what the art world calls “haptic,” derived from the Greek word meaning “able to lay hold of”.

I perceived the image in a haptic way despite not actually being able to feel it. That is, I could interpret the image as a real material, a material with expression, functionality, and credibility. The distance between me and the studied object intensified a sense of the artistic encounter — whereby physical depth creates implications for the perception of how a surface changes with distance.


I since checked the internet and found that the Reinersten offshore oil rig image is based on a photograph circulating on industry websites, where its meaning is associated with risk in subarctic waters.

Below, I placed bottom-to-top the photographic image from an industry website and its computer graphically altered version hanging in the Oslo airport. The placement of these two images in close proximity demonstrates a noticeable transition. The photographic image on the bottom documents a mechanical record through realism. By contrast, the “painted” image on the top emphasizes an artist’s relationship with color and brush stroke.

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