Illumination Study
2012-15

darkroom safe lamps
UBC MFA Studios and AMS Gallery
2012

Duratrans in lightbox
Gallery 295 lightbox space, Vancouver BC
2013

digitally scanned image printed on lightjet and mounted on Dibond aluminum
2015

Illumination Study is an examination of light and obsolescence. There is tripling of light evident within this image: the amber glow of the cracked filter, the reflection of scanner bulbs on the gleaming metal surface of the lamp, and the illumination of the light box itself oscillate beside and throughout one another. This glowing, creaturely machine floats in the middle of a black “nothing” space, an inherently digital interface that the scanner produces in the absence of a material object—the light projects upwards, dissipates, and transforms into a void. This allegorical negotiation between the analog and the digital, and the illuminated and the obscure is a line of thought throughout Henderson’s photographic practice.

The darkroom safe lamp scanned for Illumination Study is one of fifteen that Henderson purchased from Craigslist for an ongoing light installation. Henderson is interested in the analog’s material remains that circulate on the social space of the Internet and the transactions that contribute to the economy of outmoded remnants repositioned through the virtual.

The third in the series is a digital scan of the material remains of analog photographic equipment. These darkroom objects are digitally flattened and stretched – a process that remediates and abstracts physical things inextricably bound to the materiality of celluloid processes and the human body.