Made over the course of three years, this image gives a close-up look of a beach littered with pebbles, concrete blocks, trash and kelp, and inhabited by squirrels, pigeons, seagulls and humans. The changing seasons, tides, light and weather, are compressed into one composite scene. A boulder has a double shadow -one captured in the morning, the other in the evening. A piece of driftwood appears several times in the image, having been picked up and dropped elsewhere by a beachcomber.
"My fascination for live cameras on the Internet -webcams -began over a decade ago. I’ve witnessed this technology evolve from tiny grainy pictures to high resolution imagery, and from rarity to ubiquity. I’ve used webcams in theatre, online performances and photographic series, and most recently to create monumental composite images.
Many miles away from the actual location yet connected via the Internet, I direct robotic webcams to scan the picture plane bit by bit. Over the course of several months or even years, I capture thousands of still images, and in a tedious manual process stitch them together into a panorama of great complexity and detail. This process of assembly uses a visual grammar borrowed from cinema, such as repetition, montage and manipulation of time. Showing natural and man-made elements alike, the composite inadvertently compiles a map of the location’s ecosystem and socio-economic demographics. Although each individual webcam image is a true photographic representation of one instant in time and space, however mundane, the sum of their arrangement has a spectacular effect. The result reveals the passage of time and develops its own narrative logic, offering a fictive yet hyper-realistic portrait of a place."
