di/VISION interiors: exploration of internal architectural space

If you are using a Mac you may need to download it as a PDF and view it in chrome

From 1989, Lloyd Godman explored the visual strategy of what he termed di/VISION, where two camera frames are shot of a scene, one frame above the other, but with elements repeating in the resulting composite diptych. It is a binocular photographic perspective where strong geometric elements sometimes align in a persuasive gestalt, yet at other times fracture in a disjunctive visual.

The images evolved from a previous series di/VISION architecture that centres on the exterior of buildings. Godman sees them as his holiday snaps. “Often the images are taken when we are on holiday and yet my creative mid wants to explore the built environment.” But the photographs are more than snaps and it is obvious there is a refined visual mind at work. He explored this over several decades in landscapes of both the natural world and the built environment. Godman uses the technique with stealth to exploit the human desire to make sense of what we see - so while the eye sees two images, the mind wants to read a single image, there is a visual fusion of the two.

In this series he confronts architectural interiors and offers new visions of internal architectural space. There is a play with the simplicity or complexity of geometry and decoration within. As the frames are shot with a wide- angle lens, a strange perspective ensues that often suggests the dimensions and geometry of a new space, an unreal space, where an Escher-like quality emerges.

The di/VISION series of works centered around constructed spaces and architecture sits as a marker to the living work he is experimenting with - the integration of plants and architecture. Photographing architecture with a binocular view offers not only new ways of seeing existing structures but potential for how plants can inhabit these spaces.