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Unthreadings, by Fred Camper

My friend Yoel Meranda made a video fred's unthreadings of me photographing images for the Unthreadings based on images taken in Belgium in 2017, which can be seen in links from this page.

Take a tour of twenty-four selected Unthreadings
See the first 203 Unthreadings (note that I am counting each group of four as a single work).
My new artist statement, Statement 9, includes detailed comments on Unthreadings.
Index to the first 200 Unthreadings by title.

On the pages linked to above, some art works may spread beyond the edges of your screen. Resize your browser, or scroll around to see all of each. I wanted to preserve the relative sizes of all the works; if one piece is 16 inches wide on your screen, and another is only eight inches wide, that second print will in actuality be half the width of the first.

Each Unthreadings work is based on two or more images that include approximately the same area. They were shot without a tripod, so the compositions are never exactly identical. In each of the images, the focal point is different, and they are placed together to produce a comparison. In some images, the composition is quite similar; in others, you can only barely see traces of one image in the other, because the focus is very shallow; in a few, no shapes in one are visible in the other. Each group of images results in four different works, two horizontally oriented and two vertically oriented, all editions of one.

The existence of these four versions is important, to the extent that I would prefer to keep all four together. One idea is that an owner would hang one version, and then every so often alternate it with another. Two could also be hung together, and the combinations of these two would give eight arrangements that could be alternated. All four can also be hung together, but not too close, and not always. While it will be almost inevitable to prefer one of these four to another, the existence of all four together will I hope even out such preferences, making my larger point that many of our preferences are superficial, and that one can learn to appreciate a wide variety of options.

This project, Unthreadings, was born in an airplane on the ground at Reykjavik airport, Iceland, on January 5, 2017, as I gazed out the window with camera in hand and thought to focus on the water on the window's surface in one image and the distant aircraft and buildings in another. These images became Unthreadings 1.1 (Reykjavik, Rain, Night), and all the subsequent works have been made and numbered in the order shot, except that occasionally after making one I might want to reshoot the images, and would then leave the numbering the same.
Fred Camper art     Complete Fred Camper art     Fred Camper's Web site