Playoffs is a series of photographic prints created by playing games using photographic negatives from Pope’s archive. Each photographic negative is designated as a team with each team broken down into players (fragments of negative). The arena of play is paper sensitised with unexposed cyanotype solution. Each cyanotype print is the result of a game, where players from two opposing teams have come together and battled it out on the photographic field.

The series draws on the notion of playoffs where teams qualify and progress to the next round, or a champion is decided. The language, gestures and rules of gaming are simultaneously broken down and rearranged to form new arenas for play that embody fun, playfulness, chance, community, and competition.

With holes cut in the exhibited prints, the audience are invited to play against each other by throwing balls through the holes. Creating their own rules for play, they can interact with the photographs in their own playoffs.

Commissioned for Reframed Fotage Oldenburg 2024