Post-lenticular Landscapes

Post-lenticular Landscapes is a re-enactment of the early photographic expeditions of Watkins, Weed, Muybridge and Adams into Yosemite National Park. Our expedition, in Summer 2016, was not equipped with cameras but instead with the latest terrestrial laser 3D scanning equipment. The completed work - a high fidelity 3D hologram of Yosemite Valley - was on display at LACMA in Spring 2017.

In the 1870’s Eadweard Muybridge looked to Yosemite as a setting to test his pioneering photographic techniques. These early expeditions have been replicated throughout history, most famously by Ansel Adams, but more recently by thousands of digitally enabled adventurers with comparatively tiny cameras tucked into their pockets.

Post-lenticular Landscapes re-enacted these expeditions equipped with the very latest in terrestrial laser scanning technology. This crusade has unearthed the three dimensional facts of the landscape allowing the photographic experience of Muybridge, Adams and a thousand other visitors to be digitally replicated and realising Muybridge’s original endeavour to capture the scenes in three dimensions as stereograms.

In Yosemite we established a digital base camp, the centre point of which was a matte grey 4x4 vehicle which acted as our hub for processing collected 3D scan data. Over 15 days we ventured up into the National Park and to a series of key locations including Vernal and Nevada Falls. In the age of the iphone camera and the selfie our expedition was comparatively heavily laden (our laser scanning equipment took eight people to transport during the expedition!). The logistics of taking such high tech equipment into a comparatively inaccessible environment formed a major part of the re-enactment, mirroring the epic nature of the early pioneer photographers.

Set within the stripped out interior of our expedition vehicle floats a high fidelity hologram of Yosemite Valley. Millions of precisely measure points hover together in space to form a ghostly apparition of mountains, forest, cliff face and tumultuous waterfalls. Viewers peer through a series of eyeholes cut into the side of the vehicle and glimpse a slowly rotating digital effigy of the landscape.

For the second edition of Post-lenticular Landscapes, the hologram of Yosemite Valley travelled to Paris for the Biennale NEMO in a new revisited form.

Visitors peer through the holographic viewer and glimpse a slowly rotating digital effigy of the landscape. Millions of precisely measure points hover together in space to form a ghostly apparition of mountains, forest, cliff face and tumultuous waterfalls of the Yosemite National Park.