Glass, Hands, Eyes, and Mirrors

Daniel Walcher; Glass, Hands, Eyes, and Mirrors; 2022; UV-LED prints on PVC adhesive; 61 x 41 cm each.

Digital images and photographs are normally invisible to the human eye. They only sit idly in hard- drives and smartphones. To look at them we must use a monitor or similar technical device but still then it isn’t the actual image we see. We look at a matrix of RGB-LEDs shining light onto our eyes, projecting these digital images 60 times a second. Combined with a reworking of archive photographs from the pre-covid time this change of perspective gave rise to the idea of screen- portraits. A reworking of past photographs in form of photographic reproduction or manual copying of digital images.

One logical end to this exploration of digital images on a monitor is RGB itself in the purest form. Red LEDs, Green LEDs, and Blue LEDs. Combined they can produce all possible digital colors and images. Referring to the Pure Colors: Red, Yellow, Blue from 1921 by Alexander Rodchenko where these three paintings stipulated the logical final three paintings, here three photographs of red, green, and blue LEDs announce themselves as the final three photographs of the digital area but there is more to it. Translated into three poems, recalling the LED grid, the line between poetry and photography is blurred.

What you see is not what you look at. Glass, Hands, Eyes, and Mirrors appear in the other photographs as motives relating to the exploration of the monitor and reproduction of images. The enlargement through macro-photography of the displayed images reveals the inner workings of LCD- Displays. Thousands of pixels repeated all over monitor. Like building blocks of a techno track they are lined up to project digital images. Just as technoid music uses mechanical rhythm, these images make use of the rhythm of LEDs to create visual poetry as letters in sentences would. Line after line and letter after letter they create billions of colors and eventually the images photographed for this series. Pulled out of the digital by printing and enlarging the public is confronted with the original digital nature of these images whilst making these photographs viewable through their newly found materiality.

An exercise in reworking one’s relationship to digital photography, this series presents a step beyond purely representational photography with an aesthetic born out of necessity when looking at digital images on a monitor while conceptually linking poetry and the structure of language to RGB-LEDs.