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Bruce Checefsky

(Jessup, Pennsylvania, 1957 - )

Dahlia Nenekazi

2010

Archival pigment print on paper

22 x 30 in. (55.9 x 76.2 cm)

Collection of the Akron Art Museum

Gift of the artist

2013.16

More Information

The floral subjects of Bruce Checefsky’s Garden Series are familiar, but the artist’s unusual image-making process dissociates them from their natural context. Rather than use a camera with a lens, Checefsky customized an Epson optical scanner, reducing the device to its essential components. To create a photograph, he effectively “scans” scenes in his garden, with each horizontal exposure lasting about one minute. Occasionally, a flower or leaf is caught by the scanning bar, causing a linear blur effect—the artist describes this blur as “an ‘utterance’ of technology in dialogue with the natural world.” Checefsky’s method relates to Eadweard Muybridge’s multi-exposure motion studies, also made with custom equipment, which trace the passage of time during the moment of photographic capture (two of Muybridge’s studies are included in the exhibition).

Keywords
Plants
Flowers
Color
Ohio