About the Work
In his oeuvre, David Claerbout renders the boundaries between photography and film permeable by reinterpreting their distinguishing features as media. The artist’s dynamised photos and static films address the issue of temporality, an aspect both media forms are concerned with, albeit differently. The ‘Venice Lightbox’ series presents various photographs of Venice which have been exposed for an excessive length of time in the twilight of dawn and dusk respectively. Displayed in a dark room, the backlit black slide only gradually becomes visible, and only after lengthy contemplation can the image be understood in its entirety – in much the same way that it takes a certain length of time to develop a photo in the darkroom. The time it takes for the viewer’s retina to grow accustomed to the dim light in this large-format slide corresponds to time needed for a photographic image to form on photo paper once it has been exposed. Claerbout’s static image thus takes on a narrative dynamic. The artist’s concern is with the perception of reality, which reveals to the beholder the reality of perception.
