In Camera: The View From Here, 2000

For In Camera: The View from Here half of the gallery space became a large Camera Obscura.  With the hole/lens mounted in the roof, a moving image of the sky was projected onto the floor. The second half of the gallery served as exhibition space for large-scale photographs that were made using the gallery itself as camera.  The Camera Obscura brings the immensity and simplicity of the outside world inside to a domesticated, private and individual space.  The relationship of scale is reversed--we see sky by looking down instead of looking up and the world is made small, controllable, and charming.  The monstrousness of the gigantic is tamed, made cultured. The hope and aim of the Camera Obscura here is in some ways confounded: we see not the accuracy of detail outside, nor a beautiful picture, but presented is an opportunity to witness only moments of representation. It is a democratizing vision: it is different at each moment, but the same everywhere. The view destabilizes our accepted position as fixed subjects at a particular place and time.  The world leaks in confronting us with void, space, cloud, and sky.  The plethoric nature of the image (hugeness, time, motion, sound) is only partial.

Camera Obsura, silver prints