Scanography is the process of creating original, photo-based images called K-Scans (or scanographs)using live movement and action in the moving light of a digital, flatbed scanner. It is a new digital process that that while departing from traditional photography and painting, marries the aesthetics of fine art with the graphic qualities and properties of photography. Scanography "captures" this moment of creation as it is happening.

I invented the Scanographic process over 8 years ago, and through intensive studio practice have refined its visual and technical language. This uniquely personal method allows me to capture “live” the intuitive inter-weaving of physical, emotional rhythms, complex subjective, subconscious narratives often using culturally-charged objects and materials, and/or models.  The resulting K-scans,then, are surrealist choreographies and subliminal vignettes which serve as both personal and social commentary.

 

Most of my work is idiosyncratic, derived from the unconscious projections, personal experiences, and affects of race, gender, and culture, of myself and the models I use.  I refer to the resulting visual language as auto-surrealistic.

 

As a Scanographer, I am performing, or engaging in a purely imaginative, intimate dance on a film-less ground (the scanner flatbed), playing, moving – using real time as an active partner in creating meaning; forming dynamic three-dimensional constructs on a two-dimensional plane; producing text and sub-text narratives that are personal, revelatory portraits of human miscellany. 

 

When used, my models become collaborators with me in creating K-scans. I offer them a list from which to choose at least two emotions, and an opportunity to choose objects in my studio which they can use any way they wish during the scanning session.  Or they may bring their own object(s).  These choices are meant to stimulate both conscious and subconscious ideations, feelings, and memory.  After initial instruction in how Scanography works vis á vis light, movements, timing, object placement, and positioning, depending on their needs, I may or may not guide them or make suggestions.  In any case, after the session, they get to see the K-scans, and discuss their choices, intentions, and actions and how they conflict with or amplify their subjective, often hidden meanings. The process is unquestionably self-revelatory.

 

In the post-scanning phase, when the K-scan is printed and mounted on paper or canvas, I may (or may not) collage or place objects with social, political or personal references, or in the case of the model, reflect my own response to their original visual narrative.  This process creates a whole new level of engagement that blurs the relationship between model and artist; expanding my own visual and emotional vocabulary by incorporating sometimes divergent levels of discourse, expectations, and meanings derived from the shared experience.