Kwabena Slaughter

Artist’s Statement

In the strictest sense, a camera is simply an enclosed object with a hole in one side through which light enters. It predates the invention of photography by thousands of years. My work is motivated by the question, “what would photography look like if it had been invented in a different place, time, and from within a different aesthetic tradition?”

Using a specially-modified camera I shoot on long rolls of color slide-film. While keeping the shutter locked open I slowly wind the film through the camera. In this way I make the image fill the entire film-strip, without any frame breaks. The finished film-strips, which can be up to 100-ft long, are displayed on light-boxes.

Making these “photographic scrolls” is an entirely in-camera process. As such, the work could have been made 150 years ago, when photography was first being invented, or 500 years ago, wherever the chemistry, lenses, and manufacturing processes could be brought together.