Vertical I - 7 Seconds Elapsed
29.7 cm x 42 cm (x8)
Archival pigment prints on MDF
2023
Vertical I and Vertical II each display eight images of vertical panoramic artworks. The images are mounted on MDF boards, creating an organic frame around each image. The first image of each piece is a photograph of the ground and is displayed on the floor of the gallery at the base of the wall. The images successively climb up the wall and three images of the sky are attached to the ceiling, creating a sweeping view from ground to ceiling. The viewer’s encounter with these pieces becomes embodied as the sky unfolds only through the sweeping up of their vision. The panoramic artworks continue to unfold on the ceiling, past the original image on the ground, causing the viewer to strain their neck to look the at ceiling above and behind them. Horizontal I is a much more traditional display, spanning across the wall. The eight images also are mounted on MDF boards, framing off one image from the next in the sequence. The space of the gallery wall, in between each image, lingers in all three pieces as pregnant pauses force the viewer to slow down and consider the unfolding of the displays. In this way, the piece recognises the passage of time between each image of the panoramic artworks.
If we consider the flatness of the technical image, that becomes an archive of a moment, the frame emphasises the time that now only exists in this visual display. Through the spaced sequencing of each of these artworks, time unfolds once again. This display of time, however, is slower than the original image making process. The gallery wall acts as a comma in this sequence and forces a slower viewing of the panoramic. In a traditionalpanoramic image, there is no recognition of time in the stitching of multiple images, which destroys the sense of reality of time. In this sense, the panoramic image triggers a falsified belief in the space and time of the image.96 Through the inclusion of the wall space in these artworks, the viewer slows the act of looking, acknowledges Flusser’s urge to for slower looking at images, and to take in the wider contexts.97 In doing such this, the images themselves begin to enter deep time.98 Horizontal 1, 7 Seconds Elapsed displays this in a much more traditional sense, laterally across the wall, however through both Vertical I and Vertical II, the embodied viewing of the piece allows for the photographs of deep time encounter something more.
The unique display of Vertical I and Vertical II prompts the viewer to actively look at the dismantled panoramic pieces from the floor to the ceiling. Standing above the precipice of the ground image, the viewer is granted the perspective of the photographer. Stepping up and into the panoramic artworks gives access to the deep time of the technical images and the physical movement of being-in the landscape. By combining the has-been of the flattened technical image with the now of the physical action of looking, the future exists above and recognises the distinction in the time between the image of the ground and the image of the sky. However, in the display they come together in the constellation of the displayed image. The artworks become dialectical images; both the space in the landscape and the space of the gallery are met in the present moment.