Perpetual Photo, #209 B

Allan McCollum

1982–89 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Amused by the pictures providing the requisite "color" for interiors in soap operas, situation comedies, and the like, McCollum captured them by photographing his television screen. A few years later, he enlarged fragments of the pictures that had decorated the "rooms." In the unique pictures that resulted, the subjects are often indecipherable, but the dreamy floating forms are far more powerful, mysterious, and timeless than their more legible antecedents. As the artist provided the negative with each unique print, the work of art can be reproduced if lost or damaged in the future, thus underlining its permanence and the relative vapidity and evanescence of its origins.

Artist

Allan McCollum

Date

1982–89

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1992