Room dimensions: 29’ 9” x 12’, pedestal dimensions: 20’ 9” x 16” x 49.5”

14 35mm slides, 14 slide projectors with dust covers, custom slide projector controller, motion sensors, vinyl wall treatment, and 4-page exhibition catalogue.

About the Museum of Fauxtography: The Museum of Fauxtography is the only museum collecting and documenting the existence of fauxtography: light sensitive images that appear in motion pictures. Through exhibitions, lectures, and a website, the museum shares its archive of fauxtography with the public.

Selected from the thousands of images contained in the Museum of Fauxtography’s archive, The Morgue of Memories is the museum’s second exhibition. The exhibition presents fourteen portraits taken by fourteen unknown fauxtographers. Organized in chronological order on two opposing walls, the faces in this exhibition belong to people who have passed away, many of them under unusual circumstances. These images are not traditionally exhibited in the context of an art museum or gallery; instead they are usually hung on the walls in homes, placed on nightstands, put in wallets, reprinted in newspapers, and displayed at memorial services. Accompanying the exhibition is a gallery guide with an essay by the exhibition’s curator, as well as a checklist of the works on display.

Fourteen slide projectors are arranged in alternating directions on a long, narrow pedestal in a darkened room. Across from the entrance to the exhibition space is a gallery guide. When a guide is retrieved by the viewer, a motion sensor turns on the slide projector closest to them. Thirty seconds later the next slide projector turns on, and this pattern repeats around the room counterclockwise. When the eighth projector turns on, the first projector switches off so that only seven projectors are on at any given time.

The images cycle around the room as long as someone is moving through the space. If there is no movement, the projectors turn off at thirty second intervals until the room is dark.

The Morgue of Memories was produced for the Project Room in the Beeler Gallery at the Columbus College of Art & Design, in conjunction with Sitter, an exhibition exploring portraits in contemporary photography.