Corporate Culture

Corporate Culture


Corporate Culture

Corporate Culture, 1984
Gelatin Silver print, color or metalllic surfaces, 40 x 52" each



"Corporate Culture", takes as its theme the complex multilayered encoding and staging of photographic portraiture, a form of communication that convey messages imbued with belief systems. These still-lives were created in the studio using a large-format portrait camera, influenced by studies in the staging of advertising still lives, photographic portraiture in the 1981 EF. Hutton corporate annual report, a stock brokerage firm, and politically staged photographic documents such as of political figures as in the staged Mao Tse Tung portraits.
  George Legrady

Corporate Culture Series explore, within the framework of the studio, the system of objects and its syntax. Legrady composes his photographs by combining objects taken from daily life with drawings, words, and constructions made from corrugated cardboard, lead foil, or plywood. The stagings are reduced to a few essential motifs located within a zero degree of language in which an economy of means condenses the scene into a few basic symbols while expanding the scope of the image tenfold. Thus, televised warfare is signified by a rough cut-out of a tank and the image of a crushed human figure framed by the borders of a television screen. By deploying a range of routine situations and conventional symbols, Legrady casts an ironic gaze on the social consensus that regulates discourse and hardens images into stereotypes.

Pierre Dessurault
Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography