Matthew Gamber
American, born 1977 in Upper Sandusky, Ohio
Lost Color of God and Man, 2015
Two sets of forty 35mm color separation slides
Projection (each): 40 x 26 ½ inches
Collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell
Two sets of forty 35mm color separation slides
Projection (each): 40 x 26 ½ inches
Collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell
For Lost Color of God and Man, photographer Matthew Gamber revisited the haunts of Leopold Godowsky, Jr. and Leopold Mannes, childhood friends who invented the first commercially successful color film, Kodachrome. While Godowsky and Mannes (“God and Man”) revolutionized the medium with a three-color subtractive process, Gamber goes back even further in photographic history to look at additive color theory, the dominant model since James Clerk Maxwell and Thomas Sutton’s early photographic experiments. Each projector is dedicated to a red, green, or blue channel that together create the two composite, full-color images projected on the wall, but as the slide projectors drift in and out of synchronization, the viewer is able to see color created from its constituent parts. While the installation references key advances in the medium, the slide projectors themselves are objects of nostalgia, resulting in a nuanced portrayal of technological development.