{"id":175212,"date":"2009-05-01T19:35:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-02T00:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/au-dela-de-la-chambre-noire\/"},"modified":"2024-02-22T18:27:48","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T23:27:48","slug":"beyond-the-dark-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/beyond-the-dark-room\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Dark Room"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a recent series of photographs titled HVACuus<\/em>, David K. Ross \u00adcaptured steam clouds emanating from institutions which conserve artworks. In photographing these vaporous emissions that are produced when \u00adambient cold air comes into contact with warmer air released by \u00adheating and ventilation systems, 1<\/sup><\/a> 1 <\/a> - Hence the acronym HVAC<\/em> for Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning.<\/span>the artist evidently inscribes his work within a long lineage of visual works that draw on the recurrent iconographic motif of the cloud. In a photograph taken around the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art \u00adcontemporain de Montr\u00e9al one sees a segment of architecture in the picture\u2019s right side and a small patch of blue sky above it. The rest of the picture plane is occupied by a cloudy substance. In the series another work\u2014dedicated to the emanations of the Clark Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts\u2014shows clouds almost completely suffusing the building and the trees, which one can barely make out. Despite the sense of \u00adinvasion that this concentration of clouds conveys, Ross does not attempt to send a \u00admessage on climate change or air pollution for that matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His photographic gesture seeks, rather, to document the release into the wild of microparticles resulting from the artworks\u2019 \u00addecomposition. This singular poetic vision is based on the idea that every thing slowly \u00addeteriorates, even if this remains invisible to the naked eye. If the poetic image is clear, it is nevertheless difficult to understand how the \u00adphenomenon works and what underpins its organization. One can, \u00adhowever, easily imagine that this deterioration resides in the decomposition of the work\u2019s material elements into fine dust. These minuscule particles floating in the exhibition space would thus be caught by the air exchange devices and expulsed to the exterior of the premises.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In this sense the photographs would  not only be bearing witness to the museum\u2019s incapacity to completely conserve the artifacts that have been entrusted to it, but also taking over the institution\u2019s function in order to immortalize the traces of the works\u2019 disappearance. Yet, no more than the museum, the photographic apparatus is not really able to stop time, to crystallize it and hence to really guarantee the preservation of these works. Actually, what Ross\u2019 work tells us is that all creation is based on a loss. To repeat an old adage, which was used as the title of the first Qu\u00e9bec Triennial organized by the MACM and where another series of works by the artist were presented, nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the series titled Dark Rooms<\/em>, which was exhibited during the Triennial, Ross photographed storage spaces belonging to artists and museums. In bringing an image of one of their private spaces into the view of all, these photographs unveil an \u201cusually invisible\u201d aspect of the spaces\u2019 owners who are thus portrayed in a singular way. In these \u00adlarge-scale works the opacity of the images is such that one has the impression of being in front of immense black surfaces. The sought-after effect is to have the visitor experience conditions similar to that of seeing in the dark.2<\/sup><\/a> 2 <\/a> - On his website the artist explains: \u201cAs when entering a darkened room, the viewer must allow their eyes to adjust to the subtleties of the image in order to \u2018see into\u2019 the darkness of the photograph.\u201d http:\/\/graphicstandards.org\/darkrooms\/index.htm<\/span> The temporal indicator that appears in the title of the works, and which corresponds to the exposure time, may make one believe that one must invest just as much time to have access to the images\u2019 content. A quick calculation should lead anyone standing before the works to hope that this is not the case. For the photograph Thomas McIntosh\/Emmanual Madan: 691,200 seconds<\/em>, this would represent 192 hours, while for the one titled Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art contemporain de Montr\u00e9al (vide sanitaire): 223,200 \u00adseconds<\/em>, one would have to spend 62 hours before the photograph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
David K. Ross, Thomas McIntosh\/Emmanual Madan: 691,200 seconds<\/em>, 2008.
David K. Ross, Martha Fleming\/Lyne Lapointe: 50,400 seconds<\/em>, 2008.
photo\u202f: David K. Ross <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

However, considering that very few people are nyctalops, it clearly appears that Ross wants to oblige the visitor to be patient and to take far more time than usual to examine and scrutinize the works. In taking the time to let his\/her eyes get used to the darkness, the viewer hopes to discover what lies hidden in the depths of this darkness, and little by little begins to see the outlines of the rooms in which different things are stored. At this stage, nobody is able to ascertain whether it is the places or the objects that one should pay attention to. It is only once one takes into account that the project consists in photographing the storage spaces of artists and institutions, which conserve artworks, that one can deduce that one ought to look particularly at the objects. In considering that the shots were taken behind closed doors in full darkness and illuminated only by minute light infiltrations slipping through the tiny interstices around the room\u2019s openings, the notion that these objects have been left unto \u00adthemselves slowly emerges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One must therefore be less concerned with what is being \u00adconserved than the gesture of conservation as such. In a book dedicated to the need to conserve and collect in the West, Marc Guillaume points out that these \u201cconservation practices have their origin in situations where a suture<\/em> must be carried out in order to overcome the ordeal of a lack.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a> 3 <\/a> - Marc Guillaume, La politique du patrimoine<\/em> (Paris: Galil\u00e9e, coll. \u00abL\u2019espace critique\u00bb, 1980), 60. (Our translation)<\/span> The \u00adaccumulation of these objects are thus to be read as the function of a symbolic \u00admourning. Guillaume continues: \u201cThey are an object of mourning, and this explains their relative \u2018invisibility.\u2019 For they are for the most part put out of the way, hidden, half lost and forgotten, and rarely \u2018visited\u2019.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a> 4 <\/a> - Ibid., 61.<\/span> Let us not forget that some of the shots took over eight days of exposure and that during all of this time nobody entered the room. These storage rooms are not so much sarcophagi for artworks as they are reliquaries containing objects that carry a memory and which can barely be touched by light, hence the need to plunge them into darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photographic prints of the Dark Rooms<\/em> series reveal \u00adthemselves to be a means whereby the repressed can rise back to the surface of the \u00advisible. Ross\u2019 project here shares a number of elements with \u00adpsychoanalytic work, in the sense that photography develops a picture by bringing the dark areas to light.5<\/sup><\/a> 5 <\/a> - This possibility did not escape Freud\u2019s attention who used the photographic model to illustrate psychological phenomena. See Sarah Kofman, Camera Obscura: Of Ideology<\/em>, trans. Will Straw (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 24.<\/span> However, the photographic exploration that he has undertaken does not limit itself to shedding light on an \u00aduncommon or even somber side of the people who accepted to provide him with access to a corner of their intimacy, it also allows visitors to take a look at what lurks in the shadows, in their own shadows. Through the experience conveyed by a reading of these works the visitor thus lives a simulated\u2014according to the artist\u2019s wish\u2014entry into a dark chamber which s\/he can furnish with projections of his\/her fears and fantasies, and rediscovers the \u00addisquieting power of images to offer a glimpse into the unseen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Translated from the French by Bernard Sch\u00fctze]<\/p>\n

David K. Ross, Pierre Rannou<\/div>
David K. Ross, Pierre Rannou<\/div>
David K. Ross, Pierre Rannou<\/div>
David K. Ross, Pierre Rannou<\/div>
David K. Ross, Pierre Rannou<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1303,"featured_media":175129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[281,882],"tags":[],"numeros":[3995],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[335],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[969],"artistes":[3727],"type_post":[],"yoast_head":"\nBeyond the Dark Room – Esse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/beyond-the-dark-room\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beyond the Dark Room\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/beyond-the-dark-room\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Esse\" \/>\n<meta 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