Public Installations 2008/2009
In 2008 and 2009 I was commissioned by the Contact Photography Festival in Toronto and Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal to complete large scale public installations in relation to the festival themes.
In both instances I used photographs I’d created at scheduled implosions of Kodak film plants: the first in Rochester, New York, the Eastman Kodak Company’s birthplace (1888), the second is Chalon-sur-Saône, France, the birthplace, in 1827, of photography itself. These installations are meant to address the changing nature of the photographic image as well as my own transition from industrial to information age. These images are ephemeral and dematerialized yet their scale and context command attention, encouraging the viewer to question the changing nature of the photography in today’s society . The subject of the photographs is the demise of places which manufactured light-sensitive films and papers, the materials that have defined photography for the past century. RB
