nocamera.com presents the complete portfolio of archival digital prints from twenty years of work on this project. All images have been produced by placing objects on or above a flatbed scanner. No camera has been used in the process, hence the name.
"The work on the nocamera.com site is a departure from my media-based work and collaborations. In 2000, I bought a flat-bed scanner and began experimenting, placing objects directly onto the glass which resulted in some visual surprises. The direct lighting, shallow depth-of-field, and peculiar sense of gravity revealed the apparatus and its workings, and clearly departed from traditional lens-based photography. This was refreshing. It is direct, governed by traditional aesthetics and formalism. The process of building these images is more like, 'let’s see what happens', than conforming to a planned composition. Once the objects are scanned, the compositional process begins, cropping, editing, and cleaning the images. I am often surprised by the results and often feel like the images are 'gifts' or discoveries that the scanning process reveals – a way of seeing. This work allows me the satisfaction of creating something beautiful that is a result of a process that continues to reveal the things around me in ways I couldn’t do with simple observation.”
