Light Bulb

“Lightbulb, 2025 is a remake of a picture I made in 1991. That earlier image inspired my first experiments with optical ideas about light and lenses. I made it in part to show my students at MassArt about the miraculous nature of photography. Later that month in 1991 I made my first Camera Obscura picture.

A filmmaker who came to film in my studio wondered what interesting thing Max and I could come up with for him to film. The idea of revisiting the 1991 Lightbulb came to me. Making this new version of an older picture idea forced me to travel back imprecisely to a youthful idea from a younger self. I discovered in the process that the energy, ambition and curiosity that drove me to create the work in the first place continues to hover around me now, but in a different form.”