Valentina Passerini

In Scraps the viewer is forced by scale to interact with the building blocks of images. Large scale prints operate into the space of the image, like a hyper zoom lens operates into space. The further the viewer walks towards the work the more is revealed. At first the surface texture: the work is remote and flat, towering atop a wall, the further the viewer goes the more the subject is revealed: the pixels harmonise at the correct distance to make the subject unveiled: Metal scraps.

Poster was taken at night on the side of the road, it is an image of what is left of a poster affixed with tape onto a shiny steel electrical box. The ISO on my camera was cranked to maximum to be able to shoot handheld in the middle of the night. At night, light bends through the lens and is not rendered as close to reality as in the day because of the way in which photographic technology intrinsically operates. The colour aberration and information in the picture has been added by the sensor as it guesses what just isn’t there. The image is produced by a literal absence of light.

In Sky the viewer interacts with different layers of technology as they come closer to the print. The image is constructed in several layers and all of the building blocks are baked into the image itself. This photograph was taken on an aeroplane looking out of the window, it is the only image where the horizon line is present although tilted. In this image the horizon is at its purest and at the same time at its most immaterial: the clouds form a floor of sorts but at the same time there is nothing other than sky. It is a 35mm film photograph that has been scanned and then printed digitally. The strong contrast of primaries is a result of the light filtration created by the UV filter present on plane windows, and by the high refraction of the clouds. The image retains some scratches from the development process and some imperfections to emphasise the idea of layered levels of physical and digital information that is added on top of the file in layers.

In Lorry the background fades into the image. White background is a staple in scanners, the object is selected and isolated onto white. Shapes, colours, and objects interact sandwiched in between the white background at the lens. Everything is then compressed flat. There is very shallow depth of field, everything that is adhered to the scanner glass is in focus. And IS subject. There is no spatial background, white is a filler that fills the space where a background would have been. The whole thing is abstracted as only one plane devoid of depth.

In Pipes the background is completely absent. I have decided what is subject and what is filler. Is the subject a layer, a series of layers, an arbitral selection? Increasingly advanced autofocus is adopted on modern digital cameras that analyse the frame and pick what is best suited to be ‘tracked’ as subject. A sea of eyes in focus at a wedding reception, a bird dancing on the branch of a tree. The relation of subject to background is pointed in this image, what is landscape and what is subject, what is foreground and what is background.