My 2009 public installation piece, Shadow Impersonations, was a more practical continuation of the concepts of Kitchen Globes prompted by realizations resulting from a personal encounter with the practice of attention. Walking in a parking lot at night, I suddenly noticed giant shadows of trees intermingling with the passing glow of headlights about my foot steps. I stopped in my tracks and heightened my attention to my environment because there were no trees in sight: I was forced to actively and critically visually investigate my surroundings in order to make sense of it all. Individuals constantly project into the world interpretive frames that allow them to make sense; we only shift frames, or realize that we have habitually applied a frame, when incongruity calls for a frame-shift. In other words, people may not notice details unless there is a reason to do so.
Photographer Uta Barth cleverly tricks her viewers into looking at the world with a heightened sensitivity. She creates an inversion of perspective by showing us what we neglect to notice. She writes, “What interests me the most is that what is so visually familiar that it becomes almost invisible. One moves through one’s home without any sense of scrutiny or discovery, almost blindly, navigating it at night, reaching for things without even looking. I am engaged in a different type of looking in this environment...I create a visceral experience that makes no sense to remind you to be in the moment...to be invested in looking at things.”
In Shadow Impersonations, I took Barth’s idea outdoors and projected large scale shadows of trees into the cement jungle of Providence, RI. Unassuming passersby were surreptitiously recorded as they encountered this visual anomaly. Documented in realtime video and multi-perspective photographic studies, Shadow Impersonations delves into the question of how closely we pay attention to our surroundings and what, if anything, can prompt us to slow down and wonder.
