THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE
According to the classical conception and practice of photography, the intrusive shadow of the photographer—often not apprehended at the moment of pressing the shutter but only revealed once the image was developed—constituted a “mistake” and such images were often discarded given that they impaired the perception of the photographic subject as an objective reality independent of the machine recording it. But when photographic modernism and post-modernism entered the scene, what was previously derided as lack of technical expertise came to be considered as an index of the medium’s sophisticated self-consciousness and another element of formal composition. In The Ghost in the Machine these solitary shadows are elongated to the extreme, the product of first light and occasionally last light, and converted into totems that mark the landscape—urban park and coastal shore—with their uncanny presence.
