Threshold

Threshold is a series of photographs of blurred colour fields interrupted by fragments of sharply focused views. Shot in Toronto’s urban laneways, the images depict boundary fences and walls and the partial views of backyards glimpsed through gaps and holes in their surfaces.

In this work I am interested in how the particularities of the camera can draw attention to the act of looking, and to the limitations of human vision. Shot with a macro lens and limited depth of field, Threshold depicts scenes that exist solely in photographic form, yet also mirror human vision. When we focus our eye on something, we are not usually conscious of peripheral vision — everything that is out of focus.

In Threshold, barrier and backyard coalesce in a single flattened view, visually reducing the separation between surface and space, outside and inside, public and private realms. The photographs are presented like objects excised from reality — a piece of wall cut from its context along with the view that can be glimpsed through the opening in its surface. Each uniquely shaped boundary opening frames and reveals a scene distinctly, intimately tying this scene to the host surface. I’m interested in the way the surface aperture evokes the camera by acting like a lens.

The Threshold images depict everyday scenes that are rendered by the camera at once unfamiliar and uncannily familiar, drawing attention to visual perception, photographic depiction, and the mutable interface separating public and private realms.