Relics of Lumen

2016 13mMovie

(Please note that this preview is at one-sixth of the full resolution) [...] As light travels through space over time, its voyage leaves its traces either as starlight we can see in the night sky or as photographic inscriptions (on paper, acetate, or CCD) in our family albums and home movies. Photographic and cinema archives are essentially archives of light, of timeless moments drawn with light. Relics of Lumen draws on the Black Star photography collection, archived at Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto, and on NASA’s digital archives. It combines thousands of still and moving images captured over the last century of people in travel (tourists, explorers, immigrants, refugees, and migrant workers), and technologies of transport and communication, while simultaneously reminding us of the persistent human desire for discovery, adventure, travel, and conquest.