Susan
Evans works in the direction forged by Conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s,
where it was argued that the creative act lay in the idea rather than in its
execution. Many Conceptual artists relied on language to describe events or
give instructions, often replacing physical objects with texts evoking them.
Evans continues this self-referential approach with her tongue-in-cheek
photograph of a sentence detailing what the photograph is not. #419D summons a striking mental image of
a sunlit vase of flowers, yet all the viewer actually sees is white words on a
black background. The punch line is that, because humans process language
visually, Evans did not have to photograph the items she names—her audience
envisions what they read as powerfully as any photograph.