Rio Grande Photograph

Ansen Seale (b. 1960, Texas, USA) is an artist based in San Antonio, Texas. His time-based works of photographic art have been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally and have been collected by corporate, institutional and private collectors. In 2009, he received the Bernard Lifshutz Award in the Visual Arts from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio and his work is in the permanent collection of the San Antonio Museum of Art, The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas, Austin and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Salta, Argentina. Seale also works in the field of public art. His 2013 piece entitled, "You Activate This Space" received the International CODA Award for Healthcare Interior. Seale works with a special digital camera of his own invention. This camera has the ability to capture a vertical slice of the scene over and over in rapid succession, in effect, swapping the horizontal dimension of the photo for the dimension of time. Instead of mirroring the world as we know it, this camera records a hidden reality. The apparent “distortions” in the images all happen in-camera as the image is being recorded. The surprising visual result of this technique is that unmoving objects are blurred and moving subjects are rendered clearly. This is no trick, but the rules about what a photograph is have been changed. In this form of photography, abstraction is the norm, not the exception. Seale is recording a hidden reality. Like a microscope or telescope, the machine expands our ability to perceive more about the nature of reality. The apparent “distortion” of the image all happens in-camera.