double document | 2012-2015 | photography
Double Document is a series of portraits that investigates photography's relationship to performance and the abstract body. The abstraction of the subjects is created by the doubling of the documentation. I took photographs of dancers, choreographers, and performers with strong authorial voices executing either improvised or choreographed movements that were "typical" of their approaches. A selection of images were printed at 42 x 42 inches and placed on the floor, where each photographic subject re-executed the original movements, distressing and tearing the print. These distressed and torn prints were photographed with back lighting. The resulting, final images document movement in two ways: first as straightforward representation, second as sculptural trace. Double Document collapses multiple photographic moments into one photographic image. While the series draws on particular references (the abstract bodies in the paintings of Francis Bacon and the distressed photographs on the floor of his studio were of particular interest), it also invents a new way of exploring the camera's relationship to performance.
|