ANDREW WRIGHT SKIES: New Studio Work
April, 2004

"These images are the continuation of an ongoing series of works that take the Camera Obscura as a point of departure.

Literally meaning 'dark room' and the origin of the word 'camera', the simple optic and scientific principles of the Camera Obscura are well understood. The passage of light through a small hole or lens creates an inverted and reversed virtual image of the world beyond the hole on the surface where light comes to rest. Its use by artists predates the Renaissance and its principles are the basis of all photographic equipment (including the digital). It has become a useful tool in explaining the mechanics of the eye and a metaphor for vision itself. Perhaps most importantly it has become a structure upon which the very idea of representation can be based.

A hole in the roof of my studio is fitted with a makeshift shutter and a single lens element (borrowed from a pair of eyeglasses) —an optical blank. Photographic paper is unrolled onto a 4 x 8 foot platform beneath the hole and the shutter is opened, briefly exposing the paper. The paper is developed in situe creating a unique and direct silver paper negative print.

The images are decidedly 'counter-photographic': the subject is emptiness, water vapour, and light itself; the procedure is simple and does not rely on current (or even recent) technology; tonally the image is reversed; orientation ceases to matter as there is no definitive up or down, left or right. Likewise, the decisive moment of picture-taking, the traditional purview of the photographer / artist, becomes arbitrary. Each moment is inherently different from the next, yet they are all versions of the same image.

What becomes evidenced is the procedure itself, the photo-ideological apparatus, our capacity to aestheticize the world around us, and our continuing amazement within the magical space of the Camera Obscura."

Click here to see images from the exhibition