The Power of Multiple Moments and Mandalas, by Robert Hirsch

The multiple black-and-white imagery of Greg Erf’s photographs inform us photographic art is not a matter of capturing a fleeting moment from the flow of time in the manner of everyday photographers. Erf’s imaginative use of his bulky 11 x 14 inch Eastman Kodak Empire State Camera, made in 1923, informs us the only thing self-evident about photographic art or truth is that it is not self-evident. Erf’s multi-frame narratives, such as Andromeda, 2005, deconstruct our customary process for interpreting the photographic arts and take us beyond the detail of a subject’s outer shell. These iconographic pictograms create new organic forms and significance out of industrial debris and open our doors of perception.

The impact of Erf’s early twentieth century tools with his contemporary use of the diptych, quadruplet and sextuplet, activate our imaginations through the inter-relationship of the companion images. These active compositions, teeming with an abundance and range of truths, false appearances, and subtleties, embrace the complexity of life and reflect the complicated process of constructing meaning from contemporary art.

Erf’s exploration of the circle motif is historically significant. Images formed by a camera are circular in nature and over time have been shaped into the familiar rectangular window. When George Eastman introduced his first Kodak Number 1 camera in 1888 it produced circular images that the public considered a flaw (see illustration on adjacent page). Eastman “squared the circle” in the future versions of his camera to correspond to society’s expectation of pictorial space and now Erf reintroduces it in disarray.

 

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