To create the images in this new series, I customized an optical scanner by stripping the device to its bare essentials and replacing the cathode fluorescent lamp with a more powerful bulb. The resulting lushly colored images make one think of 17th Century Dutch painting and camera obscura effects in the work of Vermeer. 

I effectively “scan” my garden, repurposing the scanner as a camera. I carried the flatbed scanner outside—mounted on a tripod, plugged into a laptop and powered by a lengthy extension cord.  I used it as an improvised field camera, opening the modified scanner toward its surroundings to register close-up images of the garden landscape. These images might initially appear to be traditional botanical scenes, until one notices the occasional scanning glitch—a miniscule patch of neon color, a peculiar blur which hints at its origins.

Similar to my experimental films, the horizontal exposure of the scanner suggests the pan of a film or video camera as it captures its surroundings from a continuously shifting vantage point.  While the “photo-scanning” process involves no true depth of field, the images that it yields possess both extreme flatness and great depth.

Bruce Checefsky’s works are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Japan; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Cleveland Museum of Art; among others.