There are things in the night that are invisible to the human eye. There is no such thing as complete darkness, not even at midnight, not even in the darkest woods. Looking for images that I couldn’t see before photographing them reminded me of how our imagination works and that most of us probably forgot how to use it becoming an adult.
For the installation I decided to show the photographs in black and white. This is why:
Rod cells are responsible for black-and-white, peripheral and night vision. Cone cells are mainly responsible for fine visual detail (see Visual Acuity), color, central and day vision. There are three types of cone cells, each of which detects colored light of a different wavelength (red, green and blue).
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The photographs are not only in black and white, but also inverted. The installation includes three projections on three black walls in a black room. The projectors are set up in the middle in order to create a night scenery. The installation is an attempt to evoke an uncanny feeling using the right amount of artificial light. In the end what created the photographs in the night was the distant city light that the camera was able to catch.
Shadow writing signifies a turning away from light in favor of the memory of its apparitions: „une ombre est une mémoire simultaneé“ – in the shadows, the past attains the simultaneity of its archetypes. Thus, darkness is not only the turning away from a presence, but also the „simultaneous“ memory of light.
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1 Foundation Fighting Blindness – https://www.blindness.org/glossary/photoreceptor-cells 19.03.2019
2 Fotografie nach der Fotografie, hrsg. Hubertus v. Amelunxen, Stefan Iglhaut, Florian Rötzer, Dresden, Basel: Verlag der Kunst 1996, S.119
First project in my bachelors programme at the Zurich University of Arts.
The installation includes 3 projections of photographs taken in complete darkness. The projections are shown on a black wall in a completely black room to reproduce the darkness in which it was taken. The artificial noise of the projectors is reiforced by a low frequence sound created in pd. (Sound is not included in the video)
The installation was shown for a group of students in September 2018 @ ZHdK
soritz muuder 