Plain Sight

Plain Sight was motivated by curiosity and a desire to create a new relationship to the photographic image. I became interested in the way photogrammetry software, which is typically used to create three-dimensional models of physical spaces by comparing and measuring the details across a set of similar images, handles photographic information. While relying on the camera’s fundamental ability to accurately record surface detail, it simultaneously cannibalizes that information into abstract data. Through this process, the indexical language of photography is erased and the subject becomes plagued by an emptiness that results from lacking one of the medium’s essential characteristics. The project pictures people holding photographs from their own collections that are of personal significance. However, the memories, stories, and events contained therein are stripped from the surface, specified only in the titling of each image as an inventory of its contents. As photography moves further away from a medium that records reality, I am curious how our physical and psychological relationship to the medium shifts. These images serve as a discussion point where the well-established traditions of photography can be re-imagined

Gindlesberger Hans