The Moon (Looking Up) 1985-2022

The moon real and imagined

Digital pigment ink prints on A1 cotton rag paper. 

These photographs have been made to appear as if they originated from 4” x 5” sheet film, produced by a large format camera - an outfit no-one would take into outer space. Part of a group of over 100 photographic images. 

Around 1839 - 1840, at the beginning of the history of negative-positive photography as we knew it, the newly developed lensed camera was pointed at the heavens. The moon, difficult to see in detail without telescopic means, could now not only be seen more clearly but also recorded in every detail. The moon’s image could be fixed onto paper to enable close, prolonged looking by more than one person.

A versatile optical instrument, the camera can be equipped with a variety of different length lenses to both ‘see’ and record far and near distance. The photographic camera can make the minute large, make distance come close and reveal things unseen or otherwise unseeable by the unassisted eye and create an image of it.