Spectrum Studies

Spectrum Studies is a series of landscape photographs taken with a Hasselblad film camera using modified dark slides which separate each view into a set of pie-graph sections. Each view then is exposed on a single segment of film, but is built up by sequential exposures of pie sections to complete the whole, in camera. Scott Massey has adopted an infographic technique to create a composition that contains visual clues as to the complexity of the images, with each “pie graph” representing a photographic approach and the entire image a total photographic exploration.

The four areas of exploration will be: visible spectrum; greyscale; day-night; and ultra-infra. Visible spectrum will separate the colour channels of white light, i.e., rainbow colours; greyscale will separate the sections based on the Ansel Adams Zone System; day-night will separate the sections based on regular intervals of a twenty-four-hour cycle; and ultra-infra will separate the sections based on those accessible ranges above and below the visible spectrum using specialized optical filters.

By adopting an infographic overlay that is typically used to present complex information quickly and clearly, Massey continues on his practice investigating formal qualities of form, rooted in theories of vision, space, and time. It also removes him from the “near documentary” quality of photography done by his peers, where neo-realism plays a big role in the delivery of a notion of beauty within the image, and brings his work closer in visual correlation with flat picture plane, minimalist paintings of the mid twentieth century. This art is still beautiful, but particularly, more striking in its conceptualism and thinking around the practice of photography.