By intentionally creating images with an inescapably cinematic feel, the artist Christopher Saah engages the viewer's imagination and provides a psychological entry point into the image through a narrative. The narrative that constructs itself in the viewers mind is full of possibility and morphs depending on their own history.
This rich potential of the images can move us through time while asking us to consider any number of questions about the scene; what has just happened? what is about to happen? why? In this way, that potential of the past, present, and future are all included in a single frame. Time is condensed and frozen into a single image full of engaging questions.
Additionally the potential story extends through space; what is happening just outside the frame? How differently would we understand the image if the camera were moved just a bit to the left or right?
These questions engage our peripheral imagination in a way parallel to how we see something in our peripheral view. We know it's there, but don't quite engage with it in the same way we engage with what is directly before us. We intuit it rather than directly see it -this adds a haunting dimension to the work that suggests memories or dreams. From his urban NightScenes portfolio to showing a changing landscapes and referencing films, there is a charged stillness in all of Saah's images.
Rather than 'Photograph' Saah uses the term "Electro-Cinemagraph" to label these images. The word, coined by him, "…describes the composite processes, techniques, materials, and aesthetics referenced in the work: cinema, photography and digital imaging being the component parts." This nebulous and somehow thoroughly modern term has many connotations and adds another layer to the rich story of his images. more info at:
christophersaah.com
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