2024Stero photos
18 x 09 cm
Taken in Ontario, Canada and Vietnam
Download for 3DS
“The object of the traveller in going so far, at the cost of so much time and trouble, is to get certain experiences of being in [the place]. It is not the land, but the experiences he is after. This makes it clear, then, that in whatever place he stands he is concerned with two kinds of realities. First the earth, people, trees, the realities of the physical world ; second, the states of his consciousness, made up of thoughts, emotions, desires, the realities of his mental or soul life. The physical realities which are so often thought of as the only realities, serve simply as the means of inducing the states of consciousness, the mental reality, the end sought. … " In the stereoscope we are dealing with realities, but they are the realities of soul states, not the realities of outward physical things." ”
Ricalton, James. 1901. China Through the Stereoscope: A Journey Through the Dragon Empire at the Time of the Boxer Uprising. New York and London: Underwood & Underwood. (pg16)
The window acts as a mediator between the interior and exterior. It lets the outside in but only in predetermined ways. In this way a window acts like the edges of a painting or photograph, they show an outside idea but one framed by their boundaries.
In the context of art, the concept of art as a window originated in the Renaissance and was codified by Leon Battista Alberti. This paradigm shift revolutionized Western art, introducing the idea that a painting serves as an open window through which the artist sees what they want to portray, and the viewer could peer into the worlds they created.
"First of all, on the surface on which I am going to paint, I draw a rectangle of whatever size I want, which I regard as an open window through which the subject to be painted is seen.'"
-Leon Battista Alberti, 1435, De Pictura (translated by Cecil Grayson, 1972)-
The 3D photo has a particular tie to the window. It was realized in the late 19th early 20th century that a stereograph acted like a window into anywhere on Earth. In 19th-century stereo manuals, when describing to people for the first time how to approach a stereo image it was said that.
“[one] sees everything back of these prints as actually as if they were looking through transparent screens or windows, then they may get impressions of objects or places in the stereoscope as large as they would if looking at the original scene through windows of the same size and at the same distance.
Stereographs, then, can give us (colour only excepted) the very same visual impressions that we should receive in the presence of the actual things.”
Emry, M S. 1901. Russia Through The Stereoscope A Journey Across The Land Of The Land Of The Czar From Finland To The Black Sea. New York and London: Underwood & Underwood. (pg26)
Windows have a rich symbolic history in art, often representing the connection between the interior and the exterior, between the viewer and the world. In this series, I explore windows as both a physical subject and a metaphorical frame. The window’s structure mirrors the framing of an artwork, inviting viewers to look through it as if peering into another reality.