Undulations

This series of resin-coated fabric prints draws on physics textbook diagrams used to demonstrate the wave motion of light—a style of imaging light using ripple tanks that gained prominence through the work of American photographer Berenice Abbott. The physics studies printed on fabric excerpt pieces of numerous textbooks’ iconic depictions of constructive and destructive interference patterns. In some sculptures, a collage of broken images of light come together, combining discrete, photographed moments into a continuum much like spliced reels of film.

Abbott was part of various Parisian and New York City social circles of the time and photographed everyone from Modernist artists to the lesbian community, including figures like Man Ray, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. In the context of Abbott’s other, predominantly documentary work, these photographs serve as early documents of queer visibility and explorations of alternate modes of vision. How, within the language of physics, is the experience of difference abstracted through visual cloaking, reinforcement, or interference patterns?