SPACE OF THE IMAGE

Space of the Image is an exploration into two spatial realms of photography: First, the under-utilized spaces which exist between and among subject, lens, film, enlarger, paper and ultimately, the viewer; And secondly, the space of relationships within the picture plane. Here, the inevitability of digital picture-making has challenged me to place photography in a crisis similar to the crisis which the chemical fixing of the image of the landscape brought to painting in the mid-1800’s. Just as painting was forced to contend with its motivation and purpose, I have similarly reconsidered the act of making photographs.

With the embrace of modernism in painting came the recognition of the picture plane, or the ‘field,’ of the canvas. This discovery radically altered the way in which many artists approached the act of making a painting. The conception of the field and how it may work in a photograph has been a primary pursuit in the Space of the Image. I have chosen to concentrate upon and develop the gestalt of a picture rather than emphasizing figural relationships or illusions of deep space. This body of work represents ten years of experimentation between 1997 and 2007.