Because the Sky
is the Same Sky for Everyone, 2017
For this series, Amanda Marchand revisits an earlier project of photographs taken at night, in complete darkness, with varying exposure times. The only light available was from the full moon, which appeared an unusual number of times over the course of that summer: a full moon, a harvest moon, and a blue moon. In all the pictures of the night sky, the moon appeared, looming large. Her interest in the photographs of the sky – the outtakes of the previous series – came when she reversed them digitally to create a negative image, a kind of ghost image. After the recent passing of her mother, she began thinking about the idea of “the ghost” and how the photographic negative was a kind of ghost image to its positive sister. The forest tree line in the positive image became a glowing white space in the negative; and where the sky was dark in the positive - luminous, muted colors appeared in the negative. Essentially, the black sky harbored a hidden spectrum of color, registering its light as moons/ suns/ black holes.
The language of photography is rooted in the mirrored relationships of light and dark, negative and positive, reversals and halves. By inverting her photographs, Marchand exchanges night for day, and acknowledges that which was otherwise obscured by darkness. In doing so, she discovers a new reality, a shadow world. The resulting images, bathed in color and softness, are not only an exploration of absence/ presence and the slipstream of life and death, but also a discovery of the possible - beyond the known, visible world.
Because the Sky is an artist book in an edition of 50, housed in a clear plexiglass case, as well as a series of prints. As “Happy Hour” marks the transition time between day and night, an in-between time of shifting light, Marchand named each image for a cocktail that marks the hour.
Aunt Agatha
Queen Rose
Apples and Starfruit
Vesper
Silver Clover Club
Fall to Pieces
Blueberry Shrub
8. Jack’s Shadow
Bijou
House of Friends
Forever Young
The Last Word
Black Velvet