Idris Khan talks to the British Journal of Photography as his new public sculpture, 65,000 Photographs, goes on view in London

Every day, more than 1.8 billion photographs are uploaded online. This works out to just over 1.25 million images per minute or 20,000 per second. All of these moments are captured, stored, and shared, yet somehow, we still find a way to forget them. Over the course of the last five years, Idris Khan has taken 65,000 images on his phone, and his latest sculpture, situated in a new development in Southbank, London, is a monument to this.

“It’s quite a moving thing to think that this was five years of my life,” says Khan, gazing at a scaled mock-up on the desk of the north London studio he shares with his wife, artist Annie Morris. “That time has gone, but this, in some ways, is what’s left of it.”

Read more

Image: Idris Khan, 65,000 Photographs, 2019

Photography © Stephen White.