Moira McDonald
Fixing Air (the Wind at Three Rivers)
Of time and place and impermanence and temporality. Wisps of wind across this place (and across my face): persistent gentle touch. Photographs of the summer breeze, undiluted transient quintessence; here and then gone, natural breath haunting the landscape all along.
Fixing Air is a photographic examination of time, light, place and impermanence in the landscape orchestrated as a photographic event and performance that lasted 24 hours atop a river bend in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Interested in the recording and photographing of the wind over the course of the day, a collection of pinhole cameras in the shape of birdhouses were installed simultaneously within one tree and were allowed to expose from sunrise to sunset. The cameras each produced a unique paper negative resulting in the effect of their individual experience within the landscape.
Further examining the experience of the camera installation, the activated tree was photographed throughout the day’s installation using long expired Polaroid Time Zero film. The Polaroid photographs produced are an illustration of both the transition of light over time and the degrading of Polaroid medium within the landscape. Looking east to the source of weather and winds, a collection of panoramic Polaroids were used to document changes throughout the day, as well as video recording the subtleties of time and light transitioning over the landscape.
“Everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.”
John Muir
Chapter 3: The Yosemite National Park
Unique Paper Negative / 12 hour exposure
Unique Paper Negative / 12 hour exposure
Unique Paper Negative / 12 hour exposure
Unique Paper Negative / 12 hour exposure
Unique Paper Negative / 12 hour exposure
Unique Paper Negative / 12 hour exposure
Unique Paper Negative / 12 hour exposure
Unique Paper Negative / 12 hour exposure
