About

"the medium of photography has been thoroughly transformed...[and] something like a photographic effect still remains - survives, perhaps, in a new, altered form" 
George Baker, "Photography's Expanded Field"


This exhibition is organized in three sets; 
PHOTOGRAPH, VIDEO, and CONVERGENCE


PHOTOGRAPH - The traditional photograph is represented here with two works that feature long-exposures.  With their ghostly traces, both of these images emphasize the accumulation or effect of motion through the passage of time.  When considering early photography and the concept of film, Eadweard Muybridge's early visual deconstructions of motion come to mind.  Yet these long-exposure images directly oppose the deconstruction.  Instead, they seek to document the buildup of motion; they are the visual sum of what has occurred without interruption.  The mechanics of this type of practice are nearly analogous to the video works on display here.


VIDEO - In this exhibition, video is presented as a contemporary photographic medium.  Informed by photographic history and tropes, contemporary artists push the post-modern photographic conundrum with movement.  The video pieces shown here are very much like photographs.  If frozen at any given point, the extracted "film-still" operates in the exact way a documenting photograph would.  These featured video works are ultimately grounded in basic constraints of photography as they are shot in a single take and the camera frame does not move.  Above all, there is a distinct concept that these works demonstrate along with the unmoving frame; there is a constant subject which is "frozen", consistently centered, or slowed to an almost still image.  Time, perspective, and depth of field are emphasized in these moving works. 


CONVERGENCE - There is also an in-between way of creating movement with still images; varying in expression and technique that all begins with a single photograph.  The three works featured are specifically built from photographs which expand upon, instead of reject, Muybridge's motion studies.  Yet this type of "photography" goes much further.  Truly blurring the distinction between photography and film, these works certainly exist in Baker's expanded photography field.

Eadweard Muybridge, Gallop; saddle; bay horse, Daisy (ca. 1884-1887) 47.9x60.6 cm, collotype print.