The Eyes of Time

2020-present

Mixed Media / Research

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I’ve picked up a few cheap weird or broken lenses on eBay for under £10 a pop and began to adapt them for my DSLR. A projector lens, night vision, 60s soviet, one from WW1. There’s something really addictive about seeing the world come into focus from a new ‘eye’. Like the light is being filtered through time. This project bends and bounces light through these obsolete objects in different ways, making them see again.

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Every time you go out with a new one you recalibrate your viewpoint and frame - seeing new things you wouldn’t notice normally, seeing the same things in a different way. Different objects come into focus. The light bends, shifts and flares differently. There’s something very soothing about the mechanical and physical processes - solving the problems of focus for each combination of glass & iris using helicoids, rubber plumbing tubes and even bubble wrap for makeshift focusing/tilt shift bellows. Each lens has unique properties: flares, colours, sharpness,  bokeh. There is something interesting about the combination of old glass & 4K sensor.

 

This project builds and develops on processes I have used throughout my practice, filming through prisms/broken glass/ice, VHS or printed loops or real flora and fauna (most recently in Living Slides and the work with custom filters, ice filters etc in Ores), but now by constructing and modifying the 'eye' itself instead of putting something in front of it!