Glimpsing the innards of a video game controller is usually cause for despair: finding your DualShock in pieces after flinging it across the room in a FIFA rage. Discovering your SNES buttons on the living room carpet after your sister 'accidentally' jumped on it. Repeatedly.
Ever since Brandon Edger Allen was a child, exposing the inner workings of controllers has always been something of a hobby. When he wasn't playing with them, he would take apart his Nintendo controllers. "I remember my astonishment the first time I opened up a controller and saw all the dirt," he told us, "stains and skin particles that built up inside the seam of the controller. It was gross, but at the same time it was a realization of how much time I had spent with that controller. I had rubbed off on it." How grim.
The Toronto based photographer has turned his quirky passion into the superb series, Deconstructed - disassembled video game controllers from the Atari 2600 to Nintendo's Wii. Thankfully, there's not a flake of dead skin in sight.
(Images: Brandon Edger Allen)
Atari 2600 circa 1977
Colecovision circa 1982
Sega Master System circa 1985
Nintendo Entertainment System circa 1985
Sega Genesis circa 1988
Super Nintendo Entertainment System circa 1991
3DO Interactive Multiplayer circa 1993
Atari Jaguar circa 1993
Sega Saturn circa 1994
Sony Playstation circa 1994
Nintendo 64 circa 1996
Sega Dreamcast circa 1999
Sony PlayStation 2 circa 2000
Nintendo Game Cube circa 2001
Microsoft Xbox circa 2001
Nintendo Wii circa 2006
Microsoft Xbox 360 circa 2005
