VR.V-R.1.1
Virtual Reality - Hypothesis, 2007
The term 'virtual reality' represents a system that creates the illusion of transposition to another place. The photograph creates and presents the pursuing, inquiring and prying scrutiny that infringes on the ego and redefines the subject-object relationship. It would appear that the photograph is the perfect time-encapsulating, world-discovering mimesis – a world that is rediscovered through the camera lens as delineated by the constrictive boundaries of the frame and the optical viewer of the camera. The images “trapped in the virtual reality” might be a distortion of the sensual perception or, possibly, its duplication. The viewer proceeds within a reality that is actual or virtual, existing or non-existing. The mind can regard both illusion and actuality as being, in effect, reality. What is actuality? Is it something that we see with our own eyes or is it rather seen in the mind’s eye?
Varda Carmeli uses the camera lens in direct photography to document the image of objects and their reflected aspects. By this means she enables viewers to conduct a hypothetical discussion with regard to what they see and to the source of their visual perceptions.
