[Dave Kemp / Data Collection (detail), identity documents of the artist / 2009]

This past April I "sat" for a rather unconventional portrait for the Toronto-based artist Dave Kemp. Kemp's project, Data Collection, is an ambitious undertaking that has seen him photograph the identity documents of several dozen participants. In executing this work Dave has each subject arrange all the identity documents that they carry on their person on a table and then remove the cards they are not comfortable sharing. The resulting matrix of revealed and withheld cards provides a telling assessment of each participant's comfort in sharing personal information and also a succinct index of the institutions, organizations and activities that they are tied to. Each participant is also required to fill out a consent form that affirms their agency in choosing what identification is shared or shielded. Identity cards that are not included in the array are demarcated with Kemp's "withheld" card which cleverly doubles as a signed artist multiple to document the experience and conforms to the ISO 7810 ID-1 identification card standard.

An excerpt from Kemp's statement that highlights the fact that the private information associated with identity documents is often quite public:

In The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age Daniel Solove explains that the secretive approach to privacy doesn’t really work because participation in society demands that one reveals personal information on a regular basis for even the most mundane of activities like shopping or driving a car. Additionally, much of this personal information is held in large databases which are far beyond an individual’s control. In many cases this data is traded between organizations and is often revealed without one’s knowledge or consent. The cards themselves can be traced, generating even more personal data related to purchasing preferences, driving infractions, etc. All of this stored data can be aggregated and extrapolated to produce digital profiles of individuals which are “unauthorized ... only partially true and very reductive."

Perhaps the tangible nature of identity cards is misleading and these documents are not so much personal badges as signifiers for pervasive flows of information, a circuitous traffic overlay that sits "above" the public realm.

[Dave Kemp / Data Collection (detail), identity documents of Greg J. Smith / 2009]

My reading of Kemp's project is that it is ultimately about participants executing control over their identity documents. For a change, users have the option of deciding what is shared and what remains protected. The above photograph is of the cards that I carry in my wallet—the only thing I withheld was my drivers license (although my credit card has since expired). If nothing else, it was interesting to view my identity documents as a gestalt as I've trained myself to consider these objects as singular entities rather than nodes in a network.

Dave Kemp will be showing this work at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario next year. If you are based in the Greater Toronto Area and interested in being "profiled" email Dave as he may need a few more volunteers to reach his goal of 100 subjects.