Instruments Of Change: Subverting Traditional Photography With The Slitscan Camera

Without the tools to create, where would we be? Listening to the sound of one hand clapping, probably. In this column we’ll be looking at people who invent their own tools—be they musical, artistic, photographic—any sort of bespoke equipment from innovative builders of all disciplines and ages in a celebration of the fine art of invention. This week: Ansen Seale and his Slitscan camera

Ansen Seale is a photographer who saw fit to create his own camera because there just wasn’t one commercially available that could take the photos he wanted to take. What he ended up with is a kind of esoteric machine that shuns the pesky old horizontal dimension that’s usually so important in a conventional photo and replaces it with—time. The results look like they’ve been pulled through every graphics trick in the drop down menu, but alarmingly, these abstracted images haven’t been manipulated at all, they simply subvert our typical assumptions about how a camera should work, choosing to capture an image across time, as opposed to a moment in time.

They’re taken with something called a slitscan camera, which Seale developed himself. What it creates is pictures that are aesthetically more akin to digital artworks created using software and post-production than the typical photo we’re used to seeing. The fact that they’re created using a custom built camera makes them all the more remarkable.

To help understand this piece of hardware, and what it produces, more clearly we emailed Ansen and asked him some questions:

The Creators Project: Where did you get the idea for the slitscan camera?
This idea came as a result of my work with panoramic cameras and digital scanning back cameras. There are drawbacks to these kind of systems that I choose to make advantages. It takes time to make an image. The image is not snapped all at once. Some of the images I create have an abstract sense in that the subject may not be totally recognizable. But the fact that the subject was indeed a real object or person in front of my camera leads me to believe that the resulting image is a reality which exists, and it is our limited senses that keep us from recognising what it is.

What made you want to record the world in this abstract way?
My intention is not to disorient the viewer, but simply to present another version of reality. My images are not manipulated. This is the way the camera sees. I have not touched them up in Photoshop. They come from the camera as you see them here. I am fascinated by the idea that what we experience every day may not be reality at all. We know now, for example, that on an atomic level, our bodies contain more space than matter. Our view of the world is hopelessly egocentric. By changing a few simple rules about the way we think a camera should work, I can play with that egocentric notion: “The way I see is the way it is!” With a very simple change of visual rules, I am able to reveal a different reality of an image, one that is not less real than a straight photograph, only different.

The camera

How does the camera operate? How are these wavy, refracted forms created?
Rather than suspending a single moment, my photography examines the passage of time. To accomplish this, I invented a modern digital version of the panoramic camera. In my version, a single sliver of space is imaged over an extended period of time, yielding the surprising result that unmoving objects are blurred and moving bodies are rendered clearly. The model in the studio must move in order to be captured. This is no trick. This is photography in the purist sense, but a form of photography where abstraction is the norm, not the exception.

The slitscan camera exchanges the horizontal spatial dimension with the dimension of Time. This is done by imaging only the Y axis (a vertical line of pixels) of the same scene over and over again, up to 500 times per second. The internal processor of the camera arranges these pixel columns side by side, building up the horizontal dimension of the picture plane over time. The images are time exposures in the horizontal direction and snapshots in the vertical. Only moving or changing objects register clearly. Still objects are rendered as horizontal lines across the picture plane. This is the opposite of what you would expect with traditional photography.

Did you build the camera from scratch or did you modify an existing digital device?
Both. I have several versions of the camera. Some were made entirely from scratch. Others were cobbled together from scanners, copiers, etc. But even with the “from scratch” version, I purchased a lot of components that are technological marvels in and of themselves. The CCD is an incredible and complex device.

Where does slitscan photography come from?
I believe that all humans have a sneaking suspicion that there’s more to reality than meets the eye. We are limited and by interposing a machine between us and reality, we can gain a better understanding of the world. Instead of mirroring the world as we know it, I believe this camera records a hidden reality. Like a microscope or telescope, the machine expands our ability to perceive more about the nature of reality. The apparent “distortions” in the images all happen in-camera. Many art movements have hinted at this, but especially Cubism. Artists like Picasso and Duchamp were showing the human figure from different points in space and time on the same picture plane. When photography came along, the early artists worked with distorting mirrors. Horse racing utilises a slitscan camera to record the finish line, obviating the need for someone to “click” at just the right moment.

Argentina’s most prominent photographer, Juan Travnik once said upon seeing my portfolio, “This work is a violation of the laws of photography.” He meant it as a compliment (I think!) and went on to explain that he was speaking of (1) the absence of single point perspective and (2) the lack of the fundamental idea that a photograph is a “slice of time.” While it is easy to become caught up in the technology behind the images as well as their scientific implications, I believe it is important not to overlook their aesthetic value. After all, no matter how the images challenge our perceptions of the world, it is the pure, immediate visual impact of the composition that really hits us as we stand before any work of art.