{"id":8039,"date":"2017-03-01T17:01:07","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T17:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournalstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=8039"},"modified":"2020-07-28T20:59:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T20:59:54","slug":"to-record-to-interpret-to-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=8039","title":{"rendered":"To Record, to Interpret, to Comment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Berenice<\/a>
Berenice Abbot, Super Sight camera set up, n.d.<\/strong> (photographs \u00a9 Berenice Abbott\/Commerce Graphics Ltd, Inc., Berenice Abbott Archive, MIT Museum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gift of Ron and Carol Kurtz)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the early 1940s, Berenice Abbott (1898\u20131991) developed a form of macrophotography she called Super Sight. Over seventy of the negatives and fifty of the photographs that she made using this method exist today. Abbott\u2019s process was never documented in full, and the exact mechanics of Super Sight remain a mystery. During my research on her work, only one person\u2014Hank O\u2019Neal<\/a>, a friend of Abbott\u2019s and also a photographer\u2014was confident enough in his understanding of the technique to explain it to me when we met. Abbott had described the setup to him thirty or forty years prior to our meeting.<\/p>\n

\"Hank<\/a>
Hank O\u2019Neal holds a photograph depicting himself and Berenice Abbott taking photographs of one another, 2015<\/strong> (photograph \u00a9 Hank O’Neal; photograph \u00a9 Anna Craycroft)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Super Sight method began with Abbott dividing her small Manhattan studio on 50 Commerce Street into two rooms. One half was dimly lit. The other half was pitch black. A camera-like device sat in the middle of the dimly lit room, and the subject to be documented was placed inside. Bright light flooded this small space and refracted in the camera\u2019s lens. A cone of light was cast outward across the dim room. By inverting the balance of light between the interior and exterior space, the retrofit box camera transformed into a projector. The projected image did not stop at the wall of the room: Abbott had drilled a small hole in the wall so the projection continued through it to the adjacent, pitch-black room. Traversing each discrete space of the Super Sight setup, the image grew progressively larger and more finely detailed. It was ultimately captured on a large sheet of photosensitive film hanging on the far wall of the pitch-black room. After being magnified twice, inverted, and reverted, the resulting negative was high definition and larger than life.<\/p>\n

\"Anna<\/a>
Anna Craycroft, drawing of Super Sight camera process, 2016<\/strong> (artwork \u00a9 Anna Craycroft)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The convoluted rigging of Abbott\u2019s architectural contraption employed DIY mechanics that are almost preposterously logical. But no matter how homespun, the Super Sight process (alternately referred to as the Abbott Process or Projection Photography) was an invention. It was innovative, creative, inspired, and original. By delicately tweaking what was immediately available to her, Abbott\u2019s device performed a function previously unrealized in photographic technology. The macrophotography of Super Sight enlarged the image directly onto the photosensitive film, creating a sixteen-by-twenty-inch negative with sharp contrast and fine detail. With it, Abbott could document any solid object that fit within the interior space of her projection camera. Her Super Sight photographs were hyperbolically hyperreal. Everyday subjects were elevated from mundane observations to scientific investigations. Abbott made oversized images of faces, corn husks, minerals, tree bark, a variety of insect and animal specimens, and the palm of a hand. Exposed squarely to fill the frame, these quotidian subjects reveal the remarkable. As in all of her photography, Abbott\u2019s poetics are plain and frank. She tells you what you already know but didn\u2019t pay attention to. Or what you didn\u2019t realize you had been staring at all this time.<\/p>\n