JAMIE DOLINKO

High-rise Studies (2006)
projected photoworks

“Ubiquitous, the urban high-rise apartment building is rarely found standing alone, instead paired with its identical cousin, cousins, or at least a near relative. It is designed so that each unit has a series of windows looking out, often with a balcony. This, combined with the seemingly requisite proximity to its neighbour(s), results in each building taking on the role of the panopticon’s guard tower, as well as that of the inmates’ cells.

It is quite remarkable that, despite our sense of entitlement to privacy in our own homes, we would build these monoliths that allow us to surveil one another’s actions.” Amy Satterthwaite (text from the brochure for the Gallery 44 show, 2003)

Dolinko created these works by taking photographs of her neighbours from the balcony of her 6th fl oor apartment in Vancouver’s West End. She saw her actions as one of a witness, not an observer sitting in judgment. These works come perilously close to the legal defi nition of public and private as her camera goes beyond the artifi cial boundary supposedly created by windows.

From Walker Evans, who referred to himself as a “penitent spy”, to Sophie Calle and her intentional espionage, photography has served as an ideal marriage of voyeurism and documentation.

In the present time frame, the most conducive to privacy in decades, we know privacy is actually decreasing. We are frequently under video surveillance, and with e-mail, cell phones, and invisibly compiled and updated databases on the Internet, our anonymity is gradually corroded.

The camera is not a benign apparatus, meant just for looking through. It’s primary function implies application. With privacy becoming the currency of the future, Dolinko’s intention is to investigate boundaries where the unknown subject still intrigues.

BIOGRAPHY:

Dolinko now lives in Vancouver after many years in Amsterdam and New York. Her work has been shown throughout Europe and North America. She has an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Jamie’s photographs are the subject of a short fi lm, “Fragments of Proximity” by Rafi Spivak, and have been reviewed in Canadian Art, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Village Voice, and The New York Times.