Tom Lindsay used a pinhole camera to document his fight with cancer, a second time fight, a fight obviously filled with very painful, long lasting procedures yet also quite incredibly serene and peaceful plateaus of time. He chose a camera obscura to document his ordeal because of the unique quality created by the long exposure times and the unique quality of focus of this age old image capturing device. What we are allowed to observe here are not the split seconds, not the "definitive moments" we are so used to from the pages of popular publications. These images were not shot in order to impress us or a magazine image editor, nor to maybe make it to the cover of a publication. What we get to see here are very slow, melancholic, intimate time periods in a very wide grey zone between life and something beyond. The distance to the situation observed is very much condensed, the observer is allowed to come closer and to stay longer than usual. These are more intimate observations, more private angles, closer encounters with reality than what we are used to seeing with our own so seemingly awake eyes.
The Exhibition, which consists of 29 black and white photographs and commentary by the artist, unfolds in four distinct acts. This extends the time observed and slows down the tempo even further, creating an even deeper feeling of intimacy to the photographer and patient. There is not even the thought of a destructive disease in any of the images at first, then cancer takes over more and more till it suddenly becomes the center of the stage and the director of the project. Only in the very last frames does this unwelcome intruder somehow loosen it's destructive grip and we are allowed to see images that not only show harmony but also speak about it. Many of the images seem to be filled with thoughts of the beyond of what we know as life. And maybe it is the quality of the images, maybe it is the very honest commentary by Tom Lindsay, that somehow turns death into this "thing called death", into just another character in a play, somehow personified and disarmed and eventually just barely there...
Take your time to slowly stroll through an extraordinary online exhibition of autobiographical documentary pinhole photographs by Tom Lindsay, entitled: Diagnosis: Cancer.