Crush & Pull

Light challenges analog and digital image-makers while inventors continuously devise instruments for them to document their surroundings. Photographers use light in all different ways — shadow, outline, reflection, silhouette — however, I often cannot see light while I work, leading me to wonder - what the light does on its own, what are light’s first traces? And how does its non-materiality form the object? My projects start with questions, here I ask: "What is a 21st century photograph?" "Crush and Pull" finds my answer in partnering 19th century photogram (1834) with 20th century Polaroid 20 X 24 instant technology (circa 1980s). As I wonder what these two have in common, where they overlap, the negative sees my answer. In current discourse, the negative, merely a means to an end, is often forgotten, remains hidden. Photographic art history sites the shadow’s origin at the dawn of this medium in photogram, a paper negative contact printed for its positive (1840). Polaroid 20 X 24 makes a monumental negative, once exposed to light and developed, transfers to make its positive (www.20X24Studio.com). The future has arrived in my new "Crush and Pull" - "See What Develops!"