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Moon Studies and Star Scratches, No. 19, March 28-29, 2007, Fairbanks, Alaska, 1 hour exposures; 30, 15, 25, 30, 20 minute exposures

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Moon Studies and Star Scratches, No. 19, March 28-29, 2007, Fairbanks, Alaska, 1 hour exposures; 30, 15, 25, 30, 20 minute exposures

2007-2013
digital chromogenic print
50 in. x 40 in. (127 cm x 101.6 cm)
Henry Melville Fuller Fund, 2013.24.2

Sharon Harper
American, born 1966

Description

These two vertical photographs of star trails capture the sky during different times of day using multiple periods of exposure. In image No. 14, taken in Middlesex, Vermont, the blue night sky emerges from the deep blue-black sky surrounding. White lines of moving bodies speckle the visible sky, intersecting with the other elements. Image No. 19, taken in Fairbanks, Alaska, forms a contrast to No. 14 with a light blue sky, reminiscent of a clear day, with light lines and dots primarily along the perimeter of the image. Artist Sharon Harper made these images of star trails, at once realistic and abstract, using a large-format camera and 4-x-5-inch transparencies. The prints are the result of repeated documenting of the night sky, captured on a single piece of large-format film.

Context and Analysis

Harper’s practice reaches beyond the ‘decisive moment’ of photography, extending its scope as a time-based medium through the use of repeated exposures. This also takes her work beyond the material aspect of the image. Harper has observed that she considers “photography as technology—a prosthetic—that negotiates a relationship between us and something else . . . map[ping] a conversation with things that are beyond our perception and our control.” 1


In her Moon Studies and Star Scratches series, she traces the otherwise imperceptible paths of stars, using scientific evidence to poetic effect. Rejecting a view of the scientific and the poetic as opposites, Harper instead embraces the possibilities offered by a marriage of the two, as a way to facilitate our understanding of perception and experience. 2


Harper’s photographs forego the horizontal in favor of a sphere where stars seem to dance in a dazzling, haphazard, and to some degree unknowable choreography: “There is never a horizon line in any of my images because I am interested in experiencing space perceptually. A horizon line grounds us in our normal perspective.” 3Although the images capture sequences in time, no real chronology is present in these prints. They reject a sense of immediacy even while maintaining a vivid dynamism.


The repeated exposures recorded in Harper’s photographs ultimately both illuminate and obscure the faint trails of shifting celestial bodies. These are charted as the chance kinetic footprint of streaks and scars on the surface of film so that, as Harper has noted, “what we are left with is the act of trying to see and understand.” 4This act embraces failure as a kind of catalyst for revelation in the tradition of philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 1700s. In Kant’s classification, an experience of sublimity is “limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.” 5


Connections

Harper has noted that she draws inspiration from early experiments in photography in the 1800s. Harper’s use of the camera recalls the work of photography pioneer Edwaerd Muybridge and the later work of Harold Edgerton (Currier, 2009.44 ). Both these artists used photography to capture the phenomenon of motion beyond perception of the human eye. Harper’s work has its place in the historical trajectory of exploring film as a material, as in the abstract photogenics of Lotte Jacobi (Currier, 2006.29), made by moving light torches and candles over light-sensitive paper. The graphic accumulation of marks and the overall effect of Harper’s images call to mind certain nonphotographic works in the Currier collection, such as Joan Mitchell’s Abstract Expressionist painting Cous-cous (Currier, 1992.2.1), which similarly abandons a horizon line and evokes the physical process of making.

Written by Grace-Yvette Gemmell

Notes
1Sharon Harper, Artist Statement: http://www.sharonharper.org/statements/moon.html (accessed June 29, 2014).
2“I am not so interested in someone looking at my images and nailing down the mechanics of how they are made, but I hope they will question knowledge itself, question our ways of understanding and perceiving information, and for a moment let ourselves be upended and see the richness of seeing something from two or three perspectives. I hope we can accept the possibility that we cannot immediately know what is going on, that what we know of ourselves and our place in the world can be fluid, not fixed.” Mark Alice Durant, Interview with Sharon Harper, August 2012, Saint Lucy: http://saint-lucy.com/conversations/sharon-harper-2/ (accessed June 29, 2014).
3 Ibid.
4 Sharon Harper, quoted in press release for show at dnj Gallery, “From Above and Below,” March–April 2013: http://artforum.com/uploads/guide.002/id04804/press_release.pdf (accessed June 29, 2014).
5 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason.


Bibliography

Durant, Mark Alice. Interview with Sharon Harper, August 2012. Saint Lucy. http://saint-lucy.com/conversations/sharon-harper-2 (accessed June 29, 2014).

Harper, Sharon. Website: http://www.sharonharper.org/ (accessed June 29, 2014).

Loke, Margarett. “Art in Review: Sharon Harper.” New York Times, November 2, 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/02/arts/art-in-review-sharon-harper.html (accessed June 29, 2014).

Proctor, Minna. Interview with Sharon Harper. BOMB 111 (Spring 2010). http://bombsite.com/issues/111/articles/3450 (accessed June 29, 2014).

Zhuang, Victoria. “Portrait of an Artist: Sharon C. Harper.” Harvard Crimson, October 2, 2012. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/10/2/sharon_harper/ (accessed June 29, 2014).


Provenance
Artist
Galerie Stefan Röpke
Purchased by the Currier Museum of Art, 2013


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