Punnology, as suggested by D'Israeli, is a field of study in linguistics that never was. The photographs of Benjamin Wilkins areperhaps the visual equalivant of what this arcane discipline might have become. The artist is a linguistic visual acrobat, creating; twisting evenmilking meaning next to anomaly which stimulates the viewer into humorous pools of mirth and reflection

Wilkins first creates an environment into which the model is photographed. This characteristcally implausible theme is best seen in the works "Torrential Wonder" and "Soluble Fix" In both images the model is juxtaposed with an unlikely object. An Oversized human brain on wheels connects with the figure pulling it, or a Buckminister Fuller globe rests on the back of a figure suspended on four melting ice columns. The images are both real and not real. Some of the settings take on a Rube Goldberg like quality in a rickety wacky contraption way that could only come from a company named ACME. The aesthetic os redily apparent in "Scaffolding," "Brick Impediment," and "Technological Infant". Impossible gears turn improbable cams, which make either Spacley Sprockets or Cogswell Cogs. In "Conception Shed", the figure is subsumed into a contraption that is literally dropping thoughts so fast they are stacking up. For Wilkins, the image is the pun and the pun is the image.

Filippo Tomaso Marienetti stated that "language is the mother lode of all culture". The photographs of Benjamin Wilkins go one up on the Italian futurists by showing how everything os subject to manipulation. So as you view these images pay attention to the atmospheres and the titles for they are both carefully constructed.