Katinka Matson’s incredibly cool photography–which she creates using scanners, not cameras–is covered in this Sunday’s NY Times Magazine. Kevin Kelly writes the intro on her web site. Excerpt from the NYT Mag article follows:
This year, two different artists working independently,
one on each coast, mounted exhibits that were remarkably similar: a
collection of dazzling images of cut flowers, “photographed” not with
a camera but with the moving lens of a flatbed scanner, the kind used
in offices every day… Both artists create their images by placing
flowers and other natural objects on top of a 12-by- 17-inch scanner
– they leave the top raised to avoid crushing the flowers – and then
scanning the arrangement from below. The method creates a digital
image that is vivid and precise: a photograph that requires neither
film nor camera.Behind this new style of photography is the idea that the moving wand
of a scanner can capture a sense of perspective, a richness of color
and a level of detail that a single, static lens cannot. Back when
scanners were used only to reproduce flat images like prints or
documents or book pages, people assumed that images created on a
scanner would lack depth. In fact, the opposite is true: the flowers
look thick and voluptuous, and the images seem almost
three-dimensional. Petals touching the screen appear crisp, while
ones raised an inch or two are ghostly shadows, fading into blackness.
