“Time Capsules” and the Persistence of Vision

This image is from my “Folding Space” series. There’s a story about how this series was started in 1969. Read on to hear the entire decades-long journey….

I was going through some boxes I had in storage and found a tray of Kodachrome slides containing my very first ICM images. I made these images 50 years ago, in 1969-1970, when I was still in high school. I had a psychedelic light show that accompanied a regional rock band during their performances, and used numerous slide, film, and overhead oil projections to paint the band, performance halls, and audience in layers of kinetic, abstract, and phantasmagoric images. The purpose of the light show was to give the audience a feeling of an altered state of reality and a unique visual interpretation of the music.

Having no idea how to make vivid, psychedelic-abstract images that would ‘wow’ people, I experimented with all sorts of photography techniques to create something new, and accidently stumbled upon using ICM to photograph the city from a moving car. My buddy would drive my car, and I would roll down the window and sit on the door frame with only my legs inside the car, so that I would not get any of the vehicle in the photos. I was actually sitting precariously on the door with most of my body outside the car.. with no seatbelt. Ah, the follies of youth

I called this original series of abstract images “Electric Emanations”-’emanation’ being defined as “an abstract but perceptible thing that issues or originates from a source.” Finding these ICM photos from my youth brought back a flood of memories. I remember virtually everything about my life and my surroundings while I was making these images: the warmth of the summer night, the busy street with all the lights, the stores, the city, my car, and my best friend who was driving my car so that I could make the photographs. Besides bringing back memories of my youth and the moments when I was making these images, I was amazed to see how these photos exhibit many of the same intentions, sensitivities, and artistic aesthetics I still have around ICM photography today.

I am still fascinated with using ICM to document the vibrancy and electric nature of the city, and am still just as excited to see the abstract patterns and unexpected colours that emerge from the serendipitous interaction of light, colour, form and time. I was fascinated with revealing hidden forms and patterns of light with ICM during my youth, and still am today.