vintage diptychs from the 1980's
-Untitled-
This unnamed series of diptychs were created between 1986-1989. Wishing to experiment with my general photographic approach, I wanted to complicate the visual experience by presenting a scene of landscapes, candids or environmental portraits as two parallel frames that are part of a continuous spectrum, but broken and disjointed at the same time. Double focus planes and vanishing points and contribute to the complexity of these compositions.
I was inspired in part by my news photographer ancestors—dragging around large-format cameras and potato masher flashes–hand-held as if they were no big deal, and taking a single frame that was clean, well lit, and possessing almost objective, forensic quality imagery.
Working with my own 4×5 Crown Graphic with an on-camera Vivitar flash, I approached my subjects similarly. This whole process yielded almost one-of-a kind final images. It was a painstaking process. (Most of what I show-here are replicated digitally from the original film negatives.)