Discarded

2010
Series of Photographs


C-Prints mounted on aluminium

Images: © Tim Etchells

A series of 26 pictures taken in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, showing different playing cards, found on the street at locations across the city over the period of one week in 2009. The residue of numerous street corner card games litter the roadside and wasteground, signs of banal narratives and social interactions. Attempting to collect a complete set of the cards over the course of a week, Etchells invoked his own game-of-chance, the results of which are laid out in an incomplete grid showing the cards arranged by suit.

“In many places there were groups of guys playing cards on street corners, sitting on boxes, or crates or chairs, squatting in small groups. There seemed to be playing cards everywhere too; blown away by the wind or the traffic, abandoned. As we travelled here and there, working on other projects and meetings I started taking pictures of the cards wherever I found then, photographing them in place, trying to build a whole set.”

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