Artist Franz Jantzen

Orpheus

Date2012

MediumPigment-ink print on archival paper

Dimensions40 × 31 in. (101.6 × 78.7 cm)

Credit LineDC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art Bank Collection

Object numberDCCAH2017.026.2

ClassificationsPhotographs

Locations

DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (200 I Street SE)

DescriptionArtwork and shadows have been favorite subjects for my assemblages. In this, the shadows are being cast by Christoforo Stati’s marble “Orpheus” (c. 1600-1601) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and of me holding out my camera in the process of taking my pictures of it. Although the data I systematically gather could easily be stitched together seamlessly by software, I bring the image files in, overlap and then adjust them each by hand. This allows me to consider every juncture where two or more images meet, on its own and in light of the larger composition. My resolution of each juncture—places Cézanne called “passage”—gives the work its texture, and a piece is not done until I have tinkered with every juncture numerous times. For me, the overlapping pattern of marble tiles and image files is a second subject.