Episteme

Episteme These images are made from expired Polaroid film without exposure by a variety of processing techniques. Prints are approximately 24 x 30” archival pigment prints on fiber paper and printed in an edition of 9. Michel Foucault, a French historian whose writings were philosophical, regarded the term “episteme” as indicating a basis for all possible knowledge and discourses for a particular era. Vilem Flusser, in his Toward A Philosophy of Photography defined the episteme of the camera as an “apparatus,” something through which possibilities are programmed, predicted, limited and thoroughly redundant. My use of the term episteme for this series is an attempt to define the realm of possibilities and dictates of the usually invisible or underplayed stratum of film. The Polaroid film, in itself, lends a tremendous amount to our understanding of objects we recognize. Because these prints result from film that was never exposed, they are representations of the capacities of the film rather than any outward objects. June 2017