10 Days and Nights - 10 suspended perspex lenses with back-projected video
The Mediums Glasses I & II - Photographs printed onto old pairs of glasses using traditional darkroom techniques
I was inspired to produce a series of works based on nineteenth century occult and pseudo-scientific documentary photography. During the nineteenth century it was believed that camera technology could capture the spirit world and photographs appearing to show ghosts and a range of occult phenomena were often used as "evidence" for a world that lay beyond what we could see.
Laura Marker
Wunderkammer
The Nunnery Gallery
March 2012
Transmission V-VIII (2012) Installation: photographic prints on optical lenses.
Transmission V-VIII (2012) Installation: photographic prints on optical lenses.
Transmission V-VIII "Wunderkammer" The Nunnery Gallery in March 2012.
Through this work seeks to combine three main areas of research, including historical photographic documentation of (pseudo)-scientific research, historical modes of cataloguing and displaying artefacts, and historical scientific equipment - specifically optical devices. I am especially interested the way in which nineteenth century photographic "evidence" produced through pseudo-scientific research quickly adopted the key visual aesthetics of "serious" scientific research photography.
The staging of the installation upon a wooden trolley conjures up ideas that you are observing the drawing room of a rather eccentric (mythical) gentleman collector. The "transmissions" captured onto the lenses draw inspiration from nineteenth century documentation of occult phenomena - they are in fact entirely staged. By combining layered optical lenses (printed using traditional darkroom techniques) within an articulated cabinet made specifically for the exhibition, the images can be folded and unfolded to align different combinations of occult phenomena.
Transmission V-VIII (2012) detail
Transmission V-VIII (2012) detail