Our state of being exists in an age of disbelief, enabling a negative perspective constructed from a simultaneous loss of truth and wonder. We are adolescents at a magic act unable to let ourselves get lost in the enjoyment of the performance, yet not adept enough to discern the methods of illusion because of our narcissistic point of view.
There was a period of a couple years in which I couldn’t visit MoMA alone. I was powerless against my own remorse for the masters who toiled with the act of creation only to be snapped up by the digital gaze of tourists claiming a firsthand encounter. I’d walk through the galleries on the verge of catastrophic meltdown, observing those who I believed couldn’t possibly understand what they were truly witnessing. I had become the inverse of the adolescent at the magic act. I knew all of the tricks, but craved the feeling of wonder.
Ironically, my series This was not faked in Photoshop, which was created with the intent to reaffirm the magic of traditional techniques, while highlighting the use of perspective and light, was canceled from its scheduled publication in a popular magazine because the paper it was to be printed on could not physically support the amount of ink necessary to reproduce the quality of the images. Instead, the project was rerouted to the magazine’s digital domain, and, to my knowledge, has not yet surfaced.
It's strange to think that reality has become special, and that the authentic is somehow unique.
D.E.Todd Projects