Typewriter with Flour

The light box Typewriter with Flour (2003) shows a typewriter by the German manufacturer Rheinmetall from the 1930s, covered in flour. The work references Rodney Graham’s 35mm film installation Rheinmetall/Victoria 8, in which flour falls onto the typewriter as if it were snow or dust. Graham had found the typewriter in a thrift store in Vancouver and perceived it as a kind of time capsule, containing an old narrative. While the mechanization of writing can be situated at the beginning of modernity, the thick layer of flour covering the machine nostalgically hints at its end. Typewriter with Flour is one of Rodney Graham’s earliest light boxes. Like his Canadian artist friend Jeff Wall, Graham explored the possibilities of this photographic medium in several works.