Peekskill, NY 10.16.12 from Tidal Volumes of the Hudson River Photograph - Limited Edition of 1

The Hudson River has long enchanted artists. The Hudson School of Artists painted sublime landscapes of its arresting vistas. These paintings have been describes as “tranquility tinged with terror.” In this series I photographed the Hudson River’s currents in both still and moving pictures at several locations along its banks. I then projected the resulting moving images and re-photographed them on a rear projection screen. The imperfections and limitations of the camera’s sensor and lens became apparent as it distorted and degraded the images. I then projected the resulting video and rerecorded that. I repeated this until I found the image to be at the point where they were at the edge of becoming unrecognizable. This occurred at the sixth recording where the images of water are transformed into forms of glowing and pulsating colored light; a sublime spectacle. Each image is a composite of six photographic stills taken from each of the six stages of filming. Organizing the photographs by location, Beacon, Croton on Hudson, etc., I then layered the six iterations to represent each of the river views. In each composite picture all six images are carefully blended so as to have an equal presence. A photograph generally represents a view of a particular place at a particular moment. Each of these images represents multiple moments of their own production, encompass time and contain traces of the past. The degradation and manipulation of the image brings forth a new beauty.