Set of three dye sublimation prints on polyester fabric with copper pipes and cinder blocks
Each: 5 x 8 feet (1.5 x 2.4 meters)
2021
Broadway Market, Buffalo, New York

The three works use abstraction and distortion to occlude images of glass Fresnel lenses and harbor lights found in internet searches in online marketplaces. Together, the resulting images embody mathematical principles from quantum physics and take up photographic conversations about the bending of light and subsequent warping of reality.

Fresnel lenses saved lives at sea but had other, more detrimental effects, reinforcing European colonial expansion throughout much of the rest of the world and setting in motion the accelerationism and distortion of distances through what David Harvey refers to as “time–space compression.” This notion of time–space compression guided the digital manipulation of the images.

In the context of 2020–2021, the works were also affected by ideas of superstitions around tropical disease, stemming from the impact and pathology of the Covid-19 epidemic in our lives at the time. The title of the series derives from an idiosyncrasy of European medical history during Great Britain and Germany’s colonial periods, in which the theory of actinic light rays guided medical doctrine.

At the time, so-called actinic rays were understood to cause debilitating disease and were combatted through strange sartorial adaptations and the addition of red woolen and flannel fabrics to various clothes. The same wavelength of light radiation was coincidentally the portion of the spectrum used to expose negatives and prints in early photography. The series explores this connection between exposure and medicine through the lens of light, optics, lightwave interference patterns, and digital imagery.

Within the parking structure as context, the works also play on a sense of disorientation and loss of control, as one might drive through the garage in a set direction while constantly turning and being redirected. In this context, the fabric banners might act as roadblocks to cause viewers to pause or as lures to encourage one to reroute, go against the flow of traffic, or navigate differently through the space.

The project was presented at the Broadway Market in Buffalo, New York, as part of Play/Ground 2021, in collaboration with the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art and Resource:Art.