Live Load,
Frank Abruzzese

Live Load,
Frank Abruzzese

The process used to make the images in Live Load is adapted from Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944), whose documentation of the Russian countryside between 1909 and 1912 are among the earliest color photographs. This work predates color film technology, therefore Gorskii used a specialized camera to take three black and white photographs in rapid succession, each frame with a red, green or blue filter placed in front of the lens. These images were then recombined, and projected with their corresponding filtration to reveal full color images.

Without the same specialized camera as Gorsklii’s,  Abruzzese’s process is slower but his experimental working method results in these photographs capturing a sequence, rather than a slice of time, making small incursions into perceptions of photography’s assumed role as factual document.