The Mechanics of an Image
The New Gallery, Calgary

Using a pinhole camera, scenes from popular motion pictures are recorded from a television screen. A scene is advanced, frame-by-frame, over the duration of an approximate 60-second film exposure. The resulting photographic image presents the traces of this fleeting impression: a simultaneously compressed and expanded view of a cinematic moment.

The photographs are intended to provide a meditative view of an event in passing. The pinhole camera provides a contemplative window in which these durations may be witnessed - it pictures the flow of the disappearing impressions that comprise the cinematic experience. Formally, the pinhole recontextualizes the images, staging them in what seems to be an earlier time. In this way, the photographic images serve as a type of aide-memoire to the past, appealing to the sentiments of an audience who are familiar with the language and grammar of popular cinematography, and sometimes the very scenes depicted.