Whilst the World Sleeps - Eleanor MacNair

Self-portrait as Frederick Douglass from the series ‘Project Disaspora’, 2015 by Omar Victor Diop

whilst the world sleeps Photographs rendered in Play-Doh 2015-2023

Eleanor Macnair

RRB PHOTOBOOKS BRISTOL

An Empty Wine Bottle, a Craft Knife and a Chopping Board

These are the working tools of Eleanor Macnair, used whilst seated at a white Ikea desk, within reach of a vast number of Play-Doh tubs containing every colour you might imagine stacked in re-purposed apple crates. Macnair does not have a studio — her Play-Doh art is made in her bedroom mostly at night times when her young son is asleep or when she can grab some time between working her day job. In the morning light, Macnair photographs the Play-Doh constructions in the area next to her bins in her backyard. Effort is made to get the correct angle of shadow both to accentuate the work, but to also to play out and imagine the position of the photographer who made the original image. Once the photographic document is made the Play-Doh image is destroyed and the materials returned to their yellow pots. If ever there was a good example of recycling and sustainable practice—this is it.

Macnair’s process is a quiet one, there is no fuss or flamboyance, she inhabits the everyday.

Yes, we see her output in books, magazines and exhibition, but there is a sense that the small moments of play and concentration in the act of making are as important to Macnair as any critical or public success.

In 2013 Macnair started making her Play-Doh creations and her first book, Photographs Rendered in Play-Doh published by MacDonaldStrand in 2015, bears witness to Macnair’s process and the journey to a mastery of her craft. Early works, as seen in that publication, are naively made and rough around the edges, both funny and endearing; naive and poignant. Macnair did not practice art beyond secondary school and she claims to possess no particular creative skill. However, over the time taken to amass her extraordinary and relentless body of work, we can now see how she has honed her skills and mastered her Play-Doh craft. This development is never more apparent than it is in the refinement of Macnair’s trade mark Play-Doh eye.

We can also chart her progress in image selection, responding to the photographic canon but also to less well-known images, bringing our attention to photographs that reside in the darker corners of photographic history, or indeed those that have been left completely unnoticed. Macnair also recognises and points out the medium’s ability to order and to categorise by using typographies to bring together play doh groupings — for example images with signs, birds or settees, to mention just a few.

Macnair has a passionate following on her social networks, and at times detractors, the self-appointed guardians of the medium, questioning her seemingly casual treatment of iconic images rendered in Play-Doh. This reaction is important to Macnair. The re-evaluation of these images, positive or negative, is a central motivation to keep making this work, to render one more photograph. She is asking viewers to look slowly and to think more deeply about photographic images. She is calling for our attention and time; for us to reconnect with these images as records made in an historical, social and political context; for us to disconnect them from their iconic status and to re-see them as powerful records of a person, a place or a time.

All of this from an accidentally discovered practice refined at an Ikea desk, using an empty wine bottle, a craft knife, a chopping board and, of course, an enormous amount of Play-Doh. MacDonaldStrand 2024

All works are captioned with their original title and artist and rendered in Play-Doh by Eleanor Macnair

Lola, 2010 by Billy and Hells

Oscar Wilde, 1882 by Napoleon Sarony

Untitled film still #21, 1978 by Cindy Sherman

The Waving Girl, 2000 by Loretta Lux

Gypsy camp, Barcelona, Spain, 1987 by Mary Ellen Mark

Youth on a Wall, Jarrow, Tyneside, 1976 by Chris Killip

Paul Éluard circa 1927, photomaton

Self-Portrait at 17 years old, 2003 by Gillian Wearing

Blind Woman, New York, 1916 by Paul Strand

Salvador Dali, circa 1929, photomaton

Jacques-Andre Boiffard, 1929 photomaton

Trouser ­— Word Piece 1972 by Keith Arnatt

Untitled, 1959 by Seydou Keita

Citizens of Porto Novo 442, 2012 by Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou

Untitled, 1975 by William Eggleston

Boy with June Bug, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1963 by Gordon Parks

Imaginary CD cover for Sahar. Caspian Sea, Mahmoudabad, Iran, 2011 by Newsha Tavakolian

Limbo 5, 2004 by Bianca Brunner

Protest, Tokyo 1969 by Shomei Tomatsu

detail of Aerial Suspension, 2009 from ‘Conjurations’ by Clare Strand

detail of Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts), 1973 by John Baldessari

Empire State Building, New York City, 1955 by Elliott Erwitt

Mourner with sign at the Martin Luther King memorial service, Memphis, Tennessee, 8 April 1968 by Bob Adelman

‘I’m Desperate’ from ‘Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say’ 1992-1993 by Gillian Wearing

Rinko Kikuchi, 2007 by Kishin Shinoyama

Trolley, New Orleans, 1955 by Robert Frank

Untitled from “Back in the Days’, 1980s by Jamel Shabazz

Young farmers, 1914 by August Sander

Stanley Marsh and John Reinhardt, Amarillo, Texas, February 15, 1975 by Stephen Shore

Southend, England from ‘The Teds’ 1977 by Chris Steele-Perkins

Phoenix Park on a Sunday, Dublin, 1966 by Evelyn Hofer

Blind Twins, 1980 by Jane Evelyn Atwood

Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J., 1967 by Diane Arbus

Self-portrait, 1928 by Claude Cahun

Marina, Miss Belarusian Railway in the Brest region from ‘The Winners’ by Rafal Milach

New York City, Girl with Lily, 1942 by Helen Levitt

Nan, one month after being battered, 1984 by Nan Goldin

Juliet in White Chair from ‘At Twelve’, 1982 by Sally Mann

Renee, Paris, 1931 by Jacques-Henri Lartigue

New Brighton. From The Last Resort, 1983-85 by Martin Parr

The Damm Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, California, 1987 by Mary Ellen Mark

Girl with balloons, Grozny, Chechnya, Russia, March 2002 by Thomas Dworzak

A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), 1993 by Jeff Wall

Sveta pour Hussein Chalayan, 2000 by Sarah Moon

Twiggy, hair by Ara Gallant, Paris January 1968 by Richard Avedon

From ‘The Lost Head & The Bird’, 2017 by Sohrab Hura

Noire and Blanche, 1926 by Man Ray

Erimo Cape, 1976, from ‘Solitude of Ravens’ by Masahisa Fukase

Untitled, 2016 by Ren Hang

RRB Photobooks, March 2024 Photographs rendered in Play-Doh by Eleanor Macnair Text by MacDonaldStrand Design by Jessamine Thoemmes-Tondowski Edited by Josephine Atkinson Printer at Gomer Press, Llandysul ISBN 978-1-7385163-3-9 eleanormacnair.com rrbphotobooks.com