Sycamore I
28" x 40"

Sycamore II
19" x 40"

digital c-prints
aluminum mounted
2001-03

editions of 4

While scanning various botanical specimens, I noticed that a trembling leaf or stalk, or the movement of my hand in the background, was rendered very differently than it would be in a photograph.

Motion Studies explores these phenomena. Unlike a camera with its relatively fixed viewpoint, the scanner moves incrementally across its "lens", its glass bed; the seconds it takes to travel this distance make for a long "exposure" time. Objects moved or removed from the glass as the scanner's light beam passes leave traces that are interrupted and dissolved into pixels.

The incidental distortions - spectral shifts and watery squiggles - are purely digital, and place the subjects of these not-so-still-lifes, mainly seedpods, in an ambiguous unnatural space.