Fiona Tan's 'Correction' Blurs Video and Photography at UCLA Hammer Museum

Fiona Tan's exhibition at UCLA Hammer Museum (June 25 – October 16, 2005) features 'Correction' (2004), a video portrait series of 300 inmates filmed in four US prisons (one in California, three in Illinois). The work is presented on six circular screens, each portrait lasting 20–50 seconds, totaling nearly three hours. Tan explores the boundary between still and moving images, referencing August Sander's typological portraits while challenging his social categories. Inmates and guards volunteered to remain as still as possible before the camera; involuntary movements like blinks or hair shifts imbue the portraits with life. The vertical format mimics photographic portraiture, contrasting with typical horizontal video. Viewers can enter the circle's center, assuming a panoptic gaze, while subjects return the look. Tan's earlier 'Countenance' (2002) filmed over 200 Berlin residents in a linear sequence; 'Correction' arranges portraits circularly, allowing transparency. The work critiques power dynamics between artist, subject, and viewer, offering humanist portraits that blur observer and observed.