Hope Sandrow’s photograph Untitled Observations July 29 (cat. 25) was taken at the Trout Pond preserve on Long Island, in Southampton, New York. Then work reflects her concern with ecological issues. Trout Pond is a body of freshwater within an unspoiled wooded zone, and the stream that feeds into it comes from the aquifer layer that is essential to the freshwater supply of this community of lavish summer homes. The health of the preserve is vital to the health of the community as a whole. In Sandrow’s view, the local government has made some very questionable decisions that adversely affect the ecosystem. Her work also has a strong feminist bent. To this end, Sandrow says, “…follows my work process of an investigation evolving from the feminine-personal towards a ‘world’ view.”

This work is from Sandrow’s continuing series  Untitled Observations and a part of her larger series spacetime, in which she takes pictures with a digital camera attached to a telescope set on a motorized tripod that tracks the moon’s transit. The camera is focused on the landscape and her own body, while the telescope is aimed at the full moon. Sandrow explains, “The projection maps the observer’s figure on the ground while the camera documents the dynamic positioning of the observer to the earth, moon, stars, and sky. The documentation is a description of space in relationship to the observer, in the form of large scale landscape panoramas as well as singularly focused studies taken at close range.”

The process of inverting the image of the moon mirrors the action of the eye’s retina, and also refers to the traditional artistic and scholarly practice of employing a camera obscura to make images copied from projections. According to Sandrow, Galileo made wash drawings of the moon and sunspots using a camera obscura to project telescopic images onto paper. Her work is also reminiscent of the 19th-century German artist Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon.