6 Colour Photographs taken using Gameboy Camera, 2012
Created as part of the Swedenborg House Residency project.
The photographs depict views in the Swedenborg Society Bookshop. I blended early colour composite photography techniques with early digital photo technology to create tiny colour plates that were then exhibited within the bookshop and had to be searched for and interpreted as a kind of visual exegesis.
In 1998 Nintendo released the Gameboy Camera for its 8-bit handheld console. At the time of release it was the smallest digital camera in the world. The images it captured recreated the world in four shades of grey that when printed were barely two centimeters across. Its lens captured reality but reduced and abstracted it into photographs that seemed alien and disconnected from their source.
Marketing for the camera capitalised on this, a television advertisement that aired in the UK and Australia claimed the camera to be able to uncover truth hidden to the naked eye;
“I live with aliens, I can prove it! My Gameboy Camera reveals all.”
Jim Lockey 