Photographed from a moving car on the interstate in California.

Spacetime & Art Photography

This artist statement attempts to give some philosophical grounding to concepts of light, time and form and relate them to art photography.

Light is fundamental and essential to our experience of the physical world.

A passing car's lights is juxtaposed with the hills on the horizon above. Titled Moment of Conception, it alludes to a personal epiphany about the nature of light and the meaning of its representations through longer time exposures.  

Long exposure photographs express the two axes of time and space, exposing something real about time and space itself.

This points to the value of long exposure photography, not only as a medium of art, but also for its direct relationship with the physical laws that define our experiences of the world. Long exposures expand our frame of reference by increasing time. The longer the exposure, the more spacetime is captured, producing a layered representation of the subject.

A Brief History of Photography

Photography began in 1839 with a traditional notion of the representation of reality. This notion was defined by a naturalistic approach which simply means that the object captured by the camera is a natural representation of the object itself. For example, a photograph of a semi-truck driving is simply a capture of what we see and conforms to our natural vision of that semi-truck.  In its effort to accurately represent our natural vision of reality, traditional naturalistic photography is the original foundation of all forms of photography. It is on top of this foundation that photography evolved into an art form as the artist introduced abstraction and expression. A subtle example of this move towards abstraction and expression can be seen in this long exposure photograph titled Soft Semis.

The title Soft Semis alludes to the application of a time exposure which softens the subjects. Although the image preserves the naturalism of the subject, this image demonstrates a slight departure from traditional naturalistic photography towards interpretive expression. Another example of expression can be seen in these two photographs, Prairie and Prairie Passed.

The titles Prairie and Prairie Passed allude to the emotional tones of country life. The application of a soft time exposure evokes feelings of isolation, rural living and the passage of time.  These reactive nostalgic feelings are partly due to the softening of the resolution, resembling pre-21st century photography. These nostalgic feelings are also due to the movement, which captures the perspective of a moving car, speeding through the country.

Photography as Art

Prairie and Prairie Passed are examples of Pictorialism, the first art movement to develop out of the introduction of the camera.   In conjunction with generalized art movements, photography evolved into abstract and conceptual art . In the present, photography functions as a compelling modern medium of cultural expression and evolution.  Photography can express something unintuitive about the physics of our world. For example, this long exposure photograph titled Study of Grass reveals hidden textural, geometric qualities of light and form:

In long exposures, there are interactions of form and light as they reflect their scientific counterparts in mathematics and physics.

Representations of Spacetime

Long exposure photography is anchored in representations of spacetime. A time exposure photograph is a technique of direct manipulation of two axes: time and space.  A long exposure produces an extended frame of reference which in turn produces an image that is a composition of specific moments of time blended together in the 2-dimensional flattening of the image.

Time is measured by two functions of light, the f-stop and the shutter speed.

First, there is the length of the film exposure known as the shutter speed and second, there is the size of the f-stop which controls the amount of light that enters the lens. These two functions of light effectively speed up and slow down the recording of time. 

Space is measured by two functions, the photographer’s movement and the photographer’s field of vision.

First there is the location of the field of vision relative to the photographer and second, there is the movement of the photographer relative to her field of vision.  These two functions of space define the most fundamental quality in physics: the location of an object in space. 

These two photographs, White Semi and Green Semi, allude to the technical spacetime relationship between myself and the semis as we both speed across the interstate in California in 2013.There are patterns in the wheels that hint at the underlying geometry of the overlapping fields of vision as they stretch across time.

Realism Vs. Digital Art

My primary intention in producing photographic images is to be true to the original capture and accurately represent the axioms of time and space.

This photograph, titled Walking, alludes to the stepped motion of the signposts along the interstate  as captured at night from a moving car. There are no digital effects or post-capture alteration, just the intersection of a moving photographer and a moving subject.

Images like this can be unexpected, even strange. There is a clashing of familiar and unfamiliar conceptualizations of reality that creates both an emotional and an epistemological discord. This psychological reaction is the result of a tremor erupting between our conventional perceptions of reality and an alternate representation of that same reality.

I believe that concepts of time and space are complicated and unintuitive. Expressing the two axes of space and time, long exposure photography exposes something real about spacetime itself.  In this sense the camera functions in a manner similar to a scientific tool,  extracting data points about the physical nature of the world and recording them in visual images. At the same time the camera can function as a medium of the artist who can leverage its utility for the purpose of social expression and social influence. My hope, as an artist, is to further our understanding of the true nature of reality and to challenge us as a society to question our paradigmatic views.  

Reimagine Our Moon

As the space narrative evolves, so should our imagination.

'Moondance' is an innovative photography series of unique compositions that explore the beauty of our Moon through its inherent spacetime relationships with our planet.

limited editions by raymond bonavida