This Was Now

Terrains of Absence

Lost architecture and missing artworks leave enigmatic traces that reveal themselves to us from the past. These traces mark the intersection between history and change. Architectural fragments, parking lots, tree stumps, and old photographs reveal terrains of absence in our day-to-day cultural environment while vanished artworks are often known to us only through drawings, photographs, or the enigmatic traces left on otherwise blank walls and ceilings. This project began with the desire to investigate these traces as they are found in urban, natural, and cultural settings and endeavor to make them visible.

This was now.

What began as a desire to see lost buildings stand again over parking lots or a missing fresco by Pontormo to once again look down from a now empty chapel ceiling in the church of Santa Felicita in Florence has lead me to become a virtual rebuilder of walls and painter of murals. Using a process of “re-photography” I have explored the sites of buildings and forests that no longer exist and the locales of historic artworks that have, for various reasons, disappeared. I use historical photographs, preparatory drawings, and other visual records to produce photographs of ambiguous temporal and spatial presences. Holding transparencies of these historic images with my hand in front of the camera while standing at the vantage point from which the original image was made, I create a layering effect. “Then” and “now” are superimposed in order to conjure, spectral presences that result in an ambiguous “slippage” of time. This was now is a reference to Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida and implies how ‘the photograph brings back the dead’. The ‘now’ is recorded in the light reflected off of the person at that particular moment. It is a way of looking back in time. People in the historic image and present day passer bys seem to acknowledge each other and provide another layer of cultural and historical significance. There is a performative dimension to this work which is betrayed by the presence of my hand, holding the transparencies. This gesture locates me at the site and within the image. The resulting images make the past palpable in a playful way. In the end these observational works are meant to approach larger questions of loss and change in dealing with our history, culture and environment.

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Mark Iwinski Biography  |  Artist Statement