Berlin-based photographer Stephan Tillmans photographed a number of CRT televisions right as they are switched off. I remember the faux wood-paneled console TV in our living room growing up that I used to turn on and off repeatedly to see the groovy patterns before the image became a tiny dot that felt like it too ages to vanish completely. These lovely photographs, titled "Luminant Point Arrays," give me that same strange, anticipation-fueled feeling of being caught in an oddly-extended interstitial moment of media immersion. Although I wouldn't have put it quite that way when I was 7. From the artist statement:
The television picture breaks down and creates a structure of light. The pictures refuse external reference and broach the issue of the difference between abstraction and concretion in photography. The breakdown of the television picture discribes the breakdown of the reference. The product is self-referential photography.
"Luminant Point Arrays" (Thanks, Mathias Crawford!)
