The Ghost in the Machine

The intrusive shadow of the photographer classically constitutes a “mistake” and such images were often discarded because they impaired the idea of the subject as an objective reality independent of the machine recording it. But with photographic modernism, what was previously seen as lack of technical expertise came to be considered an index of the medium’s self-consciousness and another element of formal composition. In The Ghost in the Machine these solitary shadows are elongated to the extreme and converted into totems that mark the landscape—urban park and coastal shore—with their uncanny presence.