Emily Graham

The Blindest Man explores the oneiric space created by the dilemma of a pursuit with no answers. The work is based on the real story of an unsolved treasure hunt, in which a sculpture, carved from gold, is buried in the ground somewhere in France. The treasure has been hidden now for more than 25 years. A community of people continue to search for the gold, guided by a book of allusive clues, released by an anonymous author, who has since died. The competition was designed to be solved within a few years, but the community that has developed around it has fuelled competition and obsessions, within which rumour, misinformation and red herrings spread, confusing individual routes of investigation. Still, hundreds search on, committing hours, weeks, and years to the hunt.

Obsessions and fantasies surround the hunt, driven by player’s desire to eventually complete and succeed. Exploring the parallel relationship between fact and knowledge, and fiction and fantasy, in the hunt, I act as a treasure hunter, following players’ sometimes contradictory solutions and routes across France, searching for photographs along these routes. Guided by the players’ experience and journeys; (their) interpretations, routes, encounters, misinformation, dead ends, I’m interested in the precarious nature of interpretation and pursuit, and the photograph’s precarious relationship to truth, information, and ambiguity.