Forest

The architectural transformation of the Edith Green/Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, completed in 2013, inspired artist Vera Lutter to create Forest, a translucent screen of four acrylic panels that are printed with an image of an ethereal woodland.  To capture this photographic image, Lutter used a camera obscura (Latin for “dark room”), an optical device first developed during the 17th century to project an image inside a camera through a pinhole aperture.  On March 9, 2013, Lutter used a room-sized camera obscura on site in the forest to expose an image of the adjacent landscape onto a large sheet of silver gelatin paper, producing a photographic negative that she later developed in a traditional darkroom.  Lutter then used a digital camera to re-photograph the developed image.  This transfer of the image from analog to digital format allowed Lutter to heighten tonal contrasts and print the resulting high-definition image onto the acrylic panels.

As installed in the federal building, Forest is both a photographic and a sculptural artwork that physically engages viewers, the architectural space, and the always-changing natural light that filters through the nearby windows.  By using a photographic negative, which reverses areas of light and dark, Lutter has made a familiar scene appear unfamiliar: the bright sky and snow-covered ground are rendered black, whereas the dark tree trunks and shadowy horizon glow white.  According to Lutter, her art is not about making realistic images, but rather about the passage of time, such as the time it took trees to grow and the snow to fall, and the duration of her camera’s exposure to capture the image.