Andrew Beckham 

Line of Sight​

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Line of Sight happened accidentally, and it was a wonderful surprise. While in the studio editing through completed panoramas, I discovered that two of the images were “looking at each other,” as they were taken from different summits on different days, but were in geographical proximity and conversation. The view from one mountain top to the other happened in both directions, and so the panoramas, when facing one another, created a kind of analog VR, if I could find a way to put the viewer “on the summit” of each peak, to be able to look at the view from that peak, which was the facing panorama.

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The solution was two-fold. First, I cut apertures into the print at the site of each summit, creating a portal for the viewer to look through. And second, I had the two panoramas curve into one another, instead of having them parallel to one another. The curvature mimics the real curve of the world, engaging your peripheral vision and forcing you to look side to side as well as straight ahead when gazing through the portal. As a result, this construction creates a more dimensional, “3D” viewing experience.

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Once I had gotten the logistics and workflow dialed in, I became more intentional with my hiking and climbing itinerary, looking for opportunities to create these Line of Sight panoramic cylinders. 

And finally, the topographic maps on the exterior of the cylinders correspond to the locations on the inside of the cylinders. They were painstakingly aligned so that the apertures on the map are cut at the exact location of the peak on both the map on one side, and the photographic depiction of the peak on the other side. Overlaid on top of the vintage USGS maps are even older star charts, referencing what is above and beyond us: layers of place from the terrestrial to the cosmological.