In the first of a series of posts about the ImageObject event, I thought I would give some insight into what went into making it.

In the one and half years since I floated the idea for the event, I have sent and received somewhere in the region of 2000 emails, and in the end we raised just over $4800 to pay for some of the costs of the event.

I arrived in NYC on the evening of 24th of March, and first thing the next morning I started the 6.5 day installation of the show. Images below show the progress over the first two days. My initial plan was to create a dark band of color around the walls to provide a dark reflection for the viewing of the daguerreotypes – the idea being when you look at a plate on one wall you see the dark reflection from the wall behind you. So first thing that morning I was off around the fabric district in NYC to get a long bolt of dark fabric, something I was used to doing back when I lived there and was hunting for case making velvet.

In the gallery space, though, it quickly became apparent that more fabric would be needed to gain a decent amount of reflection. The Center for Alternative Photography uses the space for other exhibits and it wasn’t an option to paint the walls black, then labor with trying to paint them white again. After hanging the initial fabric, I transferred the artworks from the CAP office to the exhibition space.

I had designed the display cabinets in Google SketchUp and had them cut on a CNC machine in North Carolina, then shipped as flat packs to CAP. After putting the first one together I handed over the job to Vishnu, a staff member at CAP, who assembled the rest of them and painted them black. For the internal lighting of the cabinets I used LED strip lights, which I found at Canal Lighting in Chinatown, to make maximum use of the internal space in the cabinets.

All of the installation work was very time-consuming and even by the end of the second day, when I had unpacked all the artworks (that took three hours!), I felt a little overwhelmed as a one-man installation crew. With the sequestering of Erica, a CAP staff member, and with some late nights, the exhibition was installed and ready for the the arrival of the jurors to judge Best in Show (next post).