Left Right Reversed

Larry Wolf, At the Edge (2024)

What the f is happening here? The perforated graphic on the bus window has a sharp edge that is covering the right lens of my camera but I'm seeing the mesh mostly on the left side. Huh?

Larry Wolf, Looking Beyond the Edge (2024)

And again here. Whatever it is, is consistent.

Let me try to noodle it out with some diagrams...

Larry Wolf, Dual Lens Schematic (2024)

There is one "object" in this simplified world, with two arrows, one up and the other to the right. There is a pair of lenses on the camera, each projecting an image onto the sensor. The projected image is flipped by the lens, classic optics, with the arrows now pointing down and to the left. The right lens projects on the right side of the sensor; the left lena projects on the left side of the sensor. There is some vignetting at the edges and overlap between the images. 

But. Looking at the display screen on the back of the camera, I see an image where up is up and left-right orientation is correct. I can read the text on the bank; passing cars create motion blur in the correct direction. 

But.. the right side has become the left side, so the camera must be rotating the image 180 degrees. With just a single lens, this is the end of the story. With this dual lens, it's just the beginning.

With the mesh covering one lens (and a bit of the field of view of the second lens), what is seen by each lens becomes apparent. This is beginning to explain how my two-lens-single-image pictures look the way they do, something I notice when I'm making the photograph but isn't obvious to the viewer of the resulting image.

Larry Wolf, Stairs (2024)

I'm closer to the stairs which appear on the left side than I am to those on the right; they just appear to be diverging differently in the image.  If anything it looks like have bent the visual plane. Ah ha.

I've been using this lens for over a year and finally a corner case happened, in a way I noticed while making the photographs. It was clear the right lens was looking through the mesh... but seen on the left side.

A good reminder to pay attention to details, to be open to surprise and to puzzle through what might be happening.. or just enjoy the surprise!

Mirror Stage - Simon Fujiwara at the MCA

Larry Wolf, Mirror Stage (2024)

Larry Wolf, Mirror Stage (2024)

Larry Wolf, Mirror Stage (2024)

from the transcript

The protagonist of The Mirror Stage is Simon Fujiwara, an 11-year-old boy. He’s going through puberty, the process of deep emotional and physical confusion. Simon lives in a small fishing village ... [he] feel[s] suffocated and repressed. For Simon is hiding a terrible secret: Simon is gay and nobody knows it, not even himself. ...

The Mirror Stage is a play about a young artist who walks into a museum one day and sees a painting that changes his life forever. When I was 11 years old, I saw this painting, which is on the wall in front of me here. It’s called the Horizontal Stripe Painting, and it’s by Patrick Heron, and it was painted in 1959. ...

This painting was extremely significant for me for two reasons, because firstly, it made me realize when I saw it, that I wanted to become an artist, and secondly, that I was gay. ...

in 1995, IKEA bought the rights to actually copy the color code of the painting and put it on their range of soft furnishings, everything from ironing boards to bed covers. And I was actually able to buy those bed covers that were based on the painting as a teenager and literally dream in my favorite artwork. ...

a French philosopher, Jacques Lacan ... , wrote this paper, and in it he explains how human beings go through this process of looking for mirror images of themselves in other people and in objects and in the world around them. And that, during puberty, this becomes extremely heightened, that pubescent children look for mirror images—but sexual mirror images—of themselves in other people, but also in other objects. So, Patrick Heron, who made this painting, was very influenced by this notion of the mirror stage. He would even describe his paintings sometimes as being mirrors to the inner soul. And what’s interesting, or what inspired me as a teenager, is to see for the first time an abstract expressionist painting, an image in which the body has disappeared, and its just pure form and color, a sort of internal experience sort of made flesh ...

Simon Fujiwara, The Mirror Stage (2009–12)

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Tate 

Patrick Heron, Horizontal Stripe Painting: November 1957 - January 1958 (1957–8), Tate

Dual Lens Loop

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Dual Lens Wide Crop

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Larry Wolf, untitled (2024)

Lake View

Larry Wolf, Lake View (2024)

Watercolor from a Zine

Larry Wolf, Rough Cut 1977/2024 Watercolor (2024)

Larry Wolf, Rough Cut 1977/2024, full sheet unfolded (2024)

Larry Wolf, Rough Cut 1977/2024, Risograph Mini-Zine (2024)

Bimbox Pop Up

Pop Up - Bimbox, Issue #2, Summer 1990

Bimbox, Issue #2, Summer 1990

Bimbox, Issue #2, Summer 1990

Bimbox, Issue #2, Summer 1990

Lesbian and Gay publications which are available only by purchase lose vision. They may be born of good intent and theory, but as cashflow increases, their lust for change turns into lust for profits. They become consumed in a wanton frenzy of narcissism, glamour, and greed. They quickly transform into the sort of institution they were against in the first place, thereby sabotaging the Revolution and ultimately doing more harm than good.

Magazines like The Advocate and Out/Look have but one mandate: to systematically render the entire international Lesbian and Gay population brain-dead. And sadly, their evil task has been remarkably successful, with but a few pockets of clone-immune individuals scattered across the planet. Only a handful of small "alternative" publications stand in the way of the complete labotomization of our culture. BIMBOX is one of those publications.

The question remains however, who? WHO PAYS FOR BIMBOX? The answer, my friend, is simple. The truth is, you have already paid for BIMBOX. We have all paid for it - dearly. We have paid for it in blood and we have paid for it in tears. Unrelenting pain is our credit limit, and we are cursed with interminable overdraft protection. We have wept and we have suffered and we have been scarred - scarred for life. We have been wounded, injured, and maimed, and we have died. We have all literally died of boredom. Oh yes, we have paid. The horrible, undeniable truth of the matter is: BIMBOX is paid for paid in full.

Bimbox, Issue #2, Summer 1990

With thanks to Gerber/Hart Library and Archive