Vortograph | Historical Apparatus Resurrected |
A
s part of my MFA work this semester, I am investigating abstraction as an artistic concept. Digging into imaging history, I found that Alvin Langdon Coburn, a well-known Pictorialist photographer featured in many issues of “Camera Work,” is considered the first person ever to make an abstract photographic image. He did it by shooting through three shaving mirrors fashioned into a triangular tunnel in front of his lens, a device his poet friend Ezra Pound named a Vortoscope. Intrigued by this, and unable to find any other technical specifications, I decided to experiment.
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
