visible images of the invisible....

Wendy Stefansson. Untitled 4-1. Light leak photo, 2004.

In this untitled series, I am playing with boundaries.  I am making photos that border on paintings; paintings with the medium of film.  

I am deconstructing the idea of a photograph to its most fundamental components: light and film.  By the careful manipulation or random destruction of the film casing, I am allowing light to play across unexposed film, creating surprising effects, sometimes reminiscent of fire or the northern lights.   I am creating “photos” without a camera or lens.  I am creating abstract, colour-field “paintings” with a medium remarkable for its ability to render “reality”.  I am capturing the unknown, the Unknowable, in a medium ostensibly used to define what is known.  I am making visible images of the Invisible.  

I have learned that these works need to be untitled because they were created without intentionality, by means of play and wonder and a large element of chance. Naming these images might be a creative act in its own right, but it is also like finding shapes in the clouds. What you see is as valid as what I see.  Everyone must name his or her own god(s).

Increasingly the art objects that I make function as the public documentation of private experiences or events.  Each work is like a brushstroke or gesture; a record of my movements, my life as it is lived.  Some of the works in this series were created by my dancing on top of the films; the patterns of light entering the film were created by the dance.  The images are silent witnesses to an otherwise unwitnessed performance.

2005

Wendy Stefansson. Untitled 5-1. Light leak photo, 2004.

Wendy Stefansson. Untitled 10-4. Light leak photo, 2004.

Wendy Stefansson. Untitled 11-4. Light leak photo, 2004.

Wendy Stefansson. Untitled 20-1. Light leak photo, 2004.

Wendy Stefansson. Untitled 21-1. Light leak photo, 2005.

To see another of my light leak photos, see my post entitled "love is blindness" -- http://inno-particular-order.blogspot.ca/2014/01/love-is-blindness.html.