My Maiden Name is Body

2002 - 2003

I have been making these images for about ten years.  They are possible because my panoramic camera, a Noblex 150UX, has a rotating lens.  By moving in synchronization with the camera lens I can in effect use my body to paint the landscape.  My movements become the visual trace of a dance that I perform in the time that the lens is rotating and recording the landscape.  These images are different from fixed optical lens images as one side of the image occurs in a different time from the other side; it is the movement of my body that visually demonstrates the temporal depth of these images. 

I continue to be interested in landscape imagery and am constantly seeking ways that as a woman I can photograph the land.  In this project I have sought out places that feel like theatres in the landscape and responded to them, either through an appropriate costume, the colour that I apply with the costume, or the kind of movement I use.  The movements are choreographed to some extent, and I will often do practice runs first.  The image that is recorded is highly synchronistic; although I watch the lens and try to keep it in view, I never know what is recorded until I see the photographs.  I had been using a working title of body/landscape for these images, when recently I realized the relationship between the work and my surnames, Body and Field.  The titles of the images, like my Anglo-Saxon surnames, are concrete and specific and are taken from details in the landscape.