Seeing double. Double take. Take two.

 

Imaging devices record single glances of the world—Crack!—trees fall, shutters snap, photographs are captured. But the immediately obvious and apparent simplicity of the interactions between the subjects and the observer—and between the subjects themselves—are belied by repeated glances. What we see is constrained by our visual processing systems and conditioned by our expectations. Our eyes see “color,” but ultraviolet and infrared are invisible to us. The objectif-icity of our vision is undermined by different analog film emulsions, digital imaging systems, and post-processed color mappings that expose different worlds. And, we expect an image to capture the decisive moment. But in a forest, we find ourselves looking beyond the trees in the here and now. The decisive moment disappears in the trees’ constant growth and decay and collapses beneath networks of symbiotic interactions.

Stop. Look. Look away. Look again. Repeat.