1:1 (25 minutes) Reciprocity: The large camera and the studio wall

Saturday, October 17. Reciprocity: The large camera and the studio wall, is one of three ‘open studio’ events that Trudi Lynn Smith and I staged in order to invite dialogue around a project that we had been working on involving photography and the studio space at 562 Fisgard Street. We  built a large-format 16 x 20” view camera and used it to make a series of 1:1 photographic images examining the wall of the studio as we peeled back its surface. The studio space is located in a building designed by architect John Teague who was hired by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association in 1885. Both of us were drawn to the wall and the traces of lives left layered in the wall over the 100 years. The CCBA began renting the space to artists in Victoria as part of the re-development of Chinatown in the 1980s.

The second, The Long Exposure: Duration, meditation and the un-archivable, brought a group of people to the studio to meditate together while exposing a 16 x 20” negative of the studio wall. The third, The Artist Studio: Disappearances and reappearances looked at the lives of artist studios and thoughts around the large camera, analogue photographic processes and the layered history.