Iterations (III)

About

Developed over three years of intensive experimentation in the studio, Iterations is Eaton's most ambitious and technically complex body of work to date. It builds on a previous series in which Eaton constructed the colors in her final photographs through a laborious, analogue process, repositioning photography as a correlative of perception rather than of sight. In Iterations Eaton pushes this line of inquiry further, using a system entirely of her own creation-one that harnesses the additive color process in conjunction with the zone system-to test the limits of film's potential. 

Eaton makes each photograph by layering dozens of individual exposures onto a sheet of 4 x 5 film-a precise registration process that she completes in the dark, blindly, before building the final image. What appear in the photographs are nested arrangements of three-dimensional geometric objects that are painted in a range of tonal grays. Eaton methodically adds, removes, substitutes, and moves pieces in between each exposure. The vibrant colors in the final prints are made using a mathematical equation-developed by Eaton from her earlier experiments-that guides her use of RGB color filters to carefully build up the desired hues in-camera. Each photograph compresses a series of actions and interventions made over time (combining the studio and the darkroom) into a single image that cannot be replicated in physical space. The pictures appear seamless but are not fully abstract; close looking reveals blurred edges and lightly textured surfaces-real-world traces of their construction.