Visualizing abstract ideas & Dimension hopping with the use of an analog photographic process
These are photographs of residual candle wax rings that are left as a result of a candle burning through its wax from top to bottom. They are symbols of good memories created in the presence of the burning candles, and evidence of time advancing. By photographing these rings, many moments of time in the past are frozen, compressed and captured into one single instantaneous moment, the moment the photograph was taken.
The original full candles were three-dimensional objects of time, representative of potential time waiting to be spent. Once the candles burnt through their wax, leaving a layer of wax rings on the glass container, the three-dimensional objects of potential time remain three-dimensional objects of time, but now are representative of time that has passed instead of potential time waiting to be spent. Similarly to the original full candles, the original unused film used to make these photographs was an object of potential time, though representative of time in a different way. The original film represented present or future time waiting to be captured and frozen in place.
In the instantaneous moment each photograph was taken, the three-dimensional object of time transforms into a two-dimensional object of time onto the flat surface of the camera’s film. Time that has passed is now being represented on a two-dimensional plane, hence why the film is a two-dimensional object of time. So through the use of an analog photographic process, the candle, which was once a three-dimensional object of time, transforms into a two-dimensional object of time. The two-dimensional object of time, the film, is now representative of an instantaneous moment in time embedded with hours of time that have passed, and does so on a two-dimensional plane.
Once the film gets developed, scanned, printed and framed the two-dimensional objects of time transform back into three-dimensional objects of time in the form of largely sized framed photographs. Though they’re still two-dimensional in some sense as the photograph is a representation of time on a two-dimensional flat plane, but three dimensional in the sense that the final framed photograph has a significant amount of height, length and depth. The final framed photographs are now three-dimensional objects of time representative of a two-dimensional object of time which is representative of a three-dimensional object of time. The final printed and framed photographs demonstrate how it’s possible to hop through dimensions using an analog photographic process. Through this type of process, a three-dimensional object of time, the empty candle, which is representative of time spent and once representative of potential time waiting to be spent, can be transformed into a two-dimensional object of time using a camera. Once transformed, the two-dimensional object of time, the film, now becomes an object of time representative of present time embedded with hours of time passed. And that two-dimensional object of time can be transformed back into a three-dimensional object once the film is developed, printed and framed. These final steps in the process result in a three-dimensional object of time, the framed print, that is representative of permanent time embedded with an instantaneous moment in time, which is further embedded with hours of time in the past.
The fleeting good memories created in the presence of the burning candles now exist as permanent objects in space and time. And the final products of the analog photographic process encapsulate hours of time in one single moment which now exists forever.
The photographs were purposefully made with a tightly cropped frame to create an abstract composition and style that emphasizes the vibrancy of the warm yellow and orange hues contrasting with the deep blacks, and the loosely defined shapes and forms made from soft undefined lines and hard strictly defined edges. Additionally, the abstract composition signals that time is an abstract concept, something that isn’t real, but can still be represented and documented with real physical things.
