NICK WAPLINGTON
Afterimage by Emma Aars:
Nick Waplington, image from the book Living Room, Aperture, 1991.
It’s funny to think back on the photographs that meant a lot to me when I was younger. Not just as a nostalgic reminiscence, but as a way to understand and remember what I saw and liked in them, compared to what I see today. I remember being five years old or so, and loving the photographs by Nick Waplington. Their plush, synthetic surfaces stood out to me. I think of families eating ice cream in rooms with carpeted floors and patent-leather sofas in different shades of pink. The drama and chaos and abundance of people and stuff—which I have now come to see as the images of struggling British working-class homes in the 90s—filled me at the time with an unsettled combination of envy and fascination. I didn’t notice the cigarette butts on the floor, the stains everywhere, how everything was covered in a shade of dirt, or see the fights as real fights. I saw the girly dresses, soft tracksuits and plastic toys I never got. Waplington’s photos captured everything I felt my own life lacked. I can still recall my obsession with the young girl in a tartan dress trying to cut the lawn with a vacuum cleaner. There was always so much happening, and it always seemed to be so much fun.
A girl in her early teens, leans against the floral wallpaper. An older girl sits on a sofa to her left, along with others who are beyond the frame, while to her right, two younger children attempt to strangle each other. A mother with a pair of infants on her lap and a troubled face speaks to someone in the room from deep down in her red velvet armchair. Our girl has red-brown hair and a sharp face, and her hands are in the pockets of her way too big pink sweatpants, pulled up at the ankles, showing her dirty white sneakers on the wine red carpeted floor. She watches her family from a distance, as if she were the photographer—not indifferent, but reclusive in a sense. She acknowledges, but she does not participate. She is a grounding element amongst the chaos in the image. There is a self-consciousness underneath it all. Some are looking at themselves being looked at.
This text is taken from the essay Eye as a Camera, Objektiv #28. Afterimage is an ekphrastic series about that one image you see when you close your eyes, the one still lingering in your mind. We invite artists and writers to reflect on an image they can't shake. This column has been a part of Objektiv since our very first issue, originally titled Sinnbilde in Norwegian. As the sea of images continues to swell, the series explores which visuals linger and take root in today's endless stream - much like a song that plays on repeat in your head. Whether it's an image glimpsed on a billboard, a portrait in a newspaper, a family photo from an album or an Instagram reel, we're interested in those fleeting moments that stay with you and refuse to let go.