The Surrogate Eye: Peter Campus’s new videos

Early photographers with artistic ambitions sometimes blurred their images in order to imitate the effects of painting. Alfred Stieglitz, however, established the modern practice of art photography when he chose instead to develop the camera’s capacity for high definition of texture and detail. In his hands, technology, pushed beyond mere copying, revealed new aspects of familiar things and, he believed, allowed the unconscious to express itself. While Peter Campus’s new videos move in the direction of painting, they also extend this modernist endeavor to heighten perception and psychologically engage the viewer.