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On the Scale of History
October 16 - November 14, 2009 Artcite Inc, Windsor, Ontario Return to Exhibition Index
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Exhibition Statement
For this exhibition, I have chosen to work with the idea of “history”—and more specifically, histories of photography through four canonical texts. Here, it is the books themselves—the vessels and their content—that are used as the principal component and material to generate an image of history.
In the sculpture entitled Art History of Photography, viewers encounter a constructed landscape made from an accumulation of three-dimensional forms. Each page from Kahmen’s book has been cut and coiled into a pillar that arbitrarily reveals or conceals fragments from this history. It is through these details of text and imagery that we get a glimpse of the past it seeks to describe. Camera Lucida (Panels 1, 2, & 4) is similarly a constructed image yet in this case I present a time-line of sorts, one that traces my visceral response to Barthes’ dialogue with the photographic medium. Visualizing his text in this way, the scale, rhythm of events, and emptiness (the gaps) become prominent—aspects that all speak to the recording and capturing of history. Table of Contents/Captions allows for an 'objective' cross-referencing of these books organizational structure; furthermore, it helps foreground the authors' (and editors') use/reliance of text and imagery in the making of these histories. Selected texts: Kahmen, Volker. Art History of Photography, New York: Viking Press, 1974. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1988. Sontag, Susan. On Photography, New York: Picador, 1973. |