The making of Mengeri

The cameras I typically use for my work are 4x5 and medium format film cameras, which take longer to setup and don’t allow for as much spontaneity when shooting. I have never been a “shooter”, someone who takes a multiple shots of one scene. For Italian Conversation, I used a digital camera. I had wanted to cast ice for some time. I found a deep freezer and began experimenting. 

With the use of a digital camera I took pictures from several point of views, varying the placement of the hands. This was an interesting new approach to me because for so many years I had used the camera as a tool to document my installations and less as an actor in the making of the image. In the making of Water, a variation of Italian Conversation, I let the camera guide me through the installation. It was a lot of fun and surprising to see what the camera could reveal out of the installation.

Water was made using tape, lenses, cast ice, a mirror, and a studio space with no heat in January.

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