Time Frames: City Pictures
by: Michael Spano and Susan Kismaric

Hardcover. NY, powerHouse, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 112 pages. Time Frames, Michael Spano's long-awaited first monograph, catalogues the artist's exploration of spatial and temporal dimensions in photography. The book is divided into five chapters: Panoramas, Grids, Portraits, Multi-Exposures, and Diptychs; each employs a distinctive technical process to provide a new way of looking at life in New York City. Panoramas (1977-1983) show interacting urbanites moving through elongated frames as the lens of an extremely wide field camera pans during exposure. Grids (1980-1990) captures eight moments on a single negative as Spano moves through a sequence of events, pre-determinedly exposing a portion of the grid every four seconds. Portraits (1984-1990) focus on individual inhabitants transformed and etched out from their settings through the solarization and blurring forms into an atmospheric world. Multi-Exposures (1985-1998) combine solarizations with multiple perspectives. These single-negative layered compositions orchestrate and compress selected intervals of time and space into one image. Diptychs (1998-1999) fuse two distinct moments on one negative where scale, focal planes, and perspectives shift and comprise a dual image of urban spaces.