No Black Light 2007
14 colour photographs
16 X 13'' each
Behind this series of apparently abstract images is a process commonly known in the television and movie industries as “chroma key.” The most familiar example is that of the television weather forecaster, who appears onscreen to be standing in front of a series of weather maps although in the studio the background is entirely green. Once laboriously realized through a sequence of mattes that isolated the foreground shot from the background, the process allows a separately shot foreground and background image to be seamlessly mixed together. Today the desired result is achieved in one step using digital technology, in which the green background is keyed out and replaced by the desired image.
Here the subject of the photograph is a slowly rotating sheet of plate glass cut. The glass disappears during the chroma key process, leaving a black hole in the photograph. Looking closely, an attentive spectator can make out the ghostly contours of the glass in profile, but the subject is intentionally elusive.
It reversed the usual relationship of subject and ground in these photographs, bringing to the fore invisible elements of the photographic image. By stopping the chroma key process midway and not replacing the window with another image, he has created a sort of “negative” photograph in which the black glass becomes the image of the illusory transparency of the photographic image.
Diana Nemirof, Exhibition: Le grand jour, University of Carleton art gallery 2008
