June 28, 2007

Robbert Filck

robbertflick2.jpgVenice Beach, 1980

There are some photographers whose work doesn't translate well to the web. Robbert Flick is one of them. His photographic murals are often 7 or 8 feet long and consist of hundreds of stills taken in sequence along specific roads. He's been making these kinds of images for a long time and moreso than many artists who work with a single idea his collages become more interesting over time because of the changes inherent in the landscapes he is traversing.

robertflick-alongcentral.jpgAlong Central, 2005

Flick presents several sections of his Along Central mural on his website. The photographs are in a format called MrSid which is optimized for very large images full of detail (MrSid often used with maps. Get the MrSid viewer here). After downloading the software and option clicking to save the various files to your hard drive you can zoom in and out of the murals down to the level of single frames... It's worth the effort if you're into this sort of thing.

Ghost Trajectories is a website going into more technical detail on Flick's murals. The information as it's presented reminds me of 19 century landscape surveys which often included maps with their photographs...

Flick is sometimes accused of ripping off Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip but that's unfair. Both sequential image making and mapping have a long traditions going back to the dawn of photography and Flick in returning over and over again to familiar terrain has built a body of work that has his unique signature..

Semi related: Natchwey's sequential mural, murals from film stills

posted at 02:02 AM by raul

Filed under: photography

TAGS: los angeles (7) mapping (1) photography (58) time (25)

Comments:

06/28/07 01:14 PM

Robert mAnn Gallery held a show of Flick's work in early '05. I didn't have many expectations for it, but once I saw his stuff, I was really impressed. He uses a video camera pointed out his car window to capture the source images before moving them to collage.

06/28/07 04:28 PM

I'm pretty sure the video capture is a new technique. His older work I'm pretty sure was from still cameras.. And then his very early work is very different than all this. Straight B/W photography. Like Todd I had never been that interested until I saw the work in person (I think I saw one at the Smithsonian). The murals have real power in person.

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