About the Work
At the edge of a cemetery in Rouen may be found the tomb of Marcel Duchamp and his relatives, including his wife, 'Teeny' Sattler, his sister Suzanne and his brothers Jacques and Raymond.
When I arrived I found that previous visitors had made their own homages - a picture of Rrose Selavy, a broken piece of picture glass and a miniature, crumbling valise.
I had already decided on how I would make mine - one photograph taken by a camera which I would hold over the grave on the end of a pole. With luck the camera's physical support would acknowledge Marcel's celebrated Apolinere pun, while the fish-eye lens would say other things, not least his global influence on art.
This is a companion piece to Fresh Window. For that I took lots of snaps with an iPhone at St Denis, Paris which I later arranged into a pattern. But for this work just one shot would have to be it for Duchamp was nothing if economical.
Inscribed on his grave is his saying D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent (Besides, it's always the others who die.) The New York Duchamp scholar, Francis Naumann recommended adding Nous sommes les autres (We are the others).
″I still use the same approach to my work: I get an idea, think of the title and then make the work. So not much has changed since 1964″
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