"Erratum", 2000, is part of the first essential series in the the oeuvre of Christopher Williams "For Example: Die Welt ist schön" (The world is beautiful). The series is named after the eponymous book by the German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch, published in 1928, the most well-known representative of the so-called "New Objectivity". In his book Renger-Patzsch developed categories for objects, people and places. In his photographies he presented natural forms, industrial subjects and mass-produced objects with clarity of scientific illustrations. Using Renger-Patzsch’s cataloguing of the world as a leitmotif, Williams first series of works examines landscapes, animals, people and everyday objects.

“An erratum is a post-publication correction of an error in a published text. "Erratum’s" extensive title meticulously details Williams’ technical process as he corrects AGFA’s embarrassing inability to represent its own corporate identity.This focus on the mechanics of photography, coupled with Williams’ immaculate production values, recalls the slick perfection of commercial or advertising photography. Shot in a studio with absolute precision and control, this dishwasher is, as one reviewer described Williams’ work, ‘fiendishly clean’“. (https://govettbrewster.com/collection/2002-3)

Williams stages a dishwasher, presents it from its back, open - raw. Inside its loaded with clean but garish AGFA-orange dish ware. It resembles “(...) nothing more than a model in a commercial showroom, or perhaps an exhibit in a design museum. Now ubiquitous in homes in the western world, dishwashers were once the ultimate statement of wealth and modernity. With their mechanisation of household tasks, they are associated with the ‘liberation’ of the housewife and changing social structures in the 20th century. Like colour photographic film, dishwashers became widely available in the 1960s; the tipping point of the rise of consumer culture and globalised capitalism. By branding this symbol of industrial modernisation with perfect, rich AGFA orange, "Erratum" draws an explicit connection between commercial colour photography and the modern nuclear family.“

Small but deliberate imperfections create an intriguing work. “Precisely because of their high production and closeness to normal adverts, our attention is drawn to these imperfections, and once we notice them, a vast chasm opens between the photographs and the kinds of images on which they are based.“ (Godfrey, Mark: Pop? Progresso Fotografico? Radio Daniele? Christopher Williams? Kodak Color? Kapitalistischer Realismus?, in: For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 11), Kunsthalle Baden- Baden, Cologne 2010, p. 83.)

`In his photographs, Christopher Williams is more of a narrator with an eye for hidden anecdotes, for the meaning of certain signs, for underlying cultural identities. ́ (Kelsey, John: Progresso Fotografico, in: For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 10), Bergen Kunsthall, Hannover 2010, 17.)