In Camera II, 2001, Painting/Photograph/Performance

A studio at the Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, is converted into a camera obscura producing an inverted image of the Canadian Rockies within.  Canvas is stretched across the wall and a series of grey paint tones—corresponding to the Ansel Adams ‘Zone System’ of photography –are prepared and numbered.  The artist, imagining himself to being akin to photographic emulsion, then paints in the dark the resulting scene