Variography
Inside the museum, four-foot tall brick columns containing magic-lantern projectors within which the film is suspended in a tank of water. Water is an important component of the work, as it was in the formation of the city. Each brick and metal projector in the museum contain a halogen lamp, lens, and a tank of water in which sheets of recently shot large format film are suspended. As the lamp heats the water the image projected is the photograph being boiled. As each sheet of film is destroyed, a new one replaces it.
The materials and forms of the devices reference the city’s industrial and shipping past, as does the water inside the mechanisms. A photograph is the result of the confluence of the photographer and subject in time and space. Looking at a photograph is like looking at a place from the back window of a moving car as it recedes into the distance. The imagery of the cameras and projectors is generated within the devices rather than recorded and presented. The viewer’s experience is first-hand, as witness and participant rather than from a great distance. The event being watched as the images are projected isn’t the photograph taken in the past but the destruction of the image in the present.
