//Images of Distances - 2017

'Images of Distances' is a series of images that responds to the attempt of the twentieth century to capture its history through photographs. It was developed within a fence structure that encloses the Shiv Nadar University campus in Dadri and responds to the vision that emerges from the space between its structures. Fence, as a spatial impediment and a limit, enabled me to forecast my camera’s vision across space and time. This work aims to provide measurements of the vision flowing out of the fence, using Walter Benjamin's concept of "remembrance" (1942) as an alternative response to the progressive order of history.

Reference Images:

 

I positioned my camera behind the fence and pointed it in the direction of the referred location where the historical events took place. I created the photographs by adding the shutter speed of the camera's determined time, which was computed by dividing the distance (from my position to the event's location) by the speed of light (186282 miles per second).

Distance (from the fence to the each location of the historical events)

Speed of light = 186282 miles / second (given), that generated;

Time = Distance/ Speed (Light takes to travel from the fence to the destined location of the event)

This process generated a series of twelve images. The coordinates underneath each image shows the locations where the camera is pointed at through fence.

The absurdity of his [the artist] exercise merely reflect the folly of the photographic mode of revealing that supplement events with mere appearances...The work reintroduces the temporal and spatial distance that modern technology of mechanical reproduction strives to eliminate. By forcing the viewer into a visual epoche, i.e., by bracketing the appearances of the event and its site, he [the artist] reveals not only the para-visual elements that participate in the unconcealment of the historical event but also the mist that will forever engulf it, and the limitations that are set upon us visually and conceptually by our human horizon  - Achia Anzi 

Display at Kiran Nadar Museum (postgraduation final show), NOIDA