No longer exposed to problems or tension1999
Sylvester's art practice is largely concerned with romantic themes of love, loss, alienation and the fragility of meaningful social relationships. He evokes these emotions with high-resolution photographic tableaus that have been carefully staged. These scenes are often composed around popular clichés and icons of consumer culture (KFC, Star Bucks), but he seeks to invest these familiar points of reference with an emotional intensity and subjective poignancy.
This photograph shows a girl sitting on a park bench against a background of foliage dappled with sun light. She is listening to a portable CD player and staring off into the distance. She wears a summer dress and her hair is swept off her face by a light breeze. The photographer has staged this scene to evoke the air of tranquillity referred to in the title: no longer exposed to problems or tension.
'No longer exposed to problems or tension' is one of Sylvester's early works and distils a number of artistic concerns that have continued to characterise his practice. Most noticeably, this image is highly staged or ‘directorial', in a way that refers to commercial photography and advertising. As in other works from this period and later, Sylvester uses the title of the work to off-set the cool properties of the image with a poetic affectation. The foregrounding of a desirable consumer item is also a distinctive feature of Sylvester's practice.
(2014)
Chromogenic prints are printed on paper that has at least three emulsion layers containing invisible dyes and silver salts. Each emulsion layer is sensitive to a different primary colour of light (red, green or blue). The development process converts the hidden dyes to visible colour depending on the amount of light it was exposed to. This type of paper is commonly used to print from colour negatives or digital files to produce a full-colour image. It can also be used to print black-and-white images, giving softer grain and less contrast than gelatin silver prints. Commonly known as c-type prints, chromogenic processing was developed in the 1940s and widely used for colour printing, including for domestic snapshots. While recent years have seen this process accompanied by ink-jet and digital printing technologies, chromogenic printing still remains in use to this day.