Time-lapse

I have been taking photographs of the light moving through different spaces. Within each place the photographs are identical - only the light changes. These I make into time-lapse sequences by combining the images so that they slowly and seamlessly dissolve into each other. The work is presented as looped movie clips. Some of these are also shown together with the component photographs.

These pieces articulate a juncture between still photography and the moving image. Time-lapse imagery has been used in photography at least since Muybridge's well-known movement studies. But whereas Muybridge's interest was in the mechanics of movement, mine is more an interest in temporal structure; the movement of light as an expression of time.

The analog movie is of course built from a sequence of still images. At 24 frames per second the eye perceives a normal sense of time, and we are accustomed to the way in which filmmakers speed up or slow down time by varying the number of frames per second at which the camera is run. In my time-lapse sequences I further disrupt the sense of time, in effect both slowing it down and speeding it up. It is about tracking movement with a minimum amount of images, about the static silent rhythm of time.

Dia: Chelsea, 4th floor uses two adjacent images to sever the camera's passive point of view. Thus drawing attention to the optical and framing characteristics of different image-making tools, it echoes the way in which different artists used this exhibition space over the years.

(See also Chinati Foundation Residency)