Lost in Light
A Film by Gilles Goyette
Lost in Light was playing on the TV in my apartment during a party once, and a friend said, "When I first saw it, I thought, sure, photographs, whatever. Now I can't take my eyes of it." That's Gilles' style in so much of his work: self-effacing. (In Super Vox, the "I" is a vanishing one.) But it has the force of a tsunami behind it – a whole universe that offers a totally absorbing experience.
From his 2nd-floor apartment window in the heart of Toronto's historic Cabbagetown district, Gilles took over 15,000 photographs of a street corner over more than a year. (Like The Random Generated Text Project, this would have been inconceivable before digital technology.)
He whittled this down to 1,500 for Lost in Light, a film composed of ever-changing still images, accompanied by an original sound-score of street noises and ambient audio. When it was presented as an exhibition & installation at Gallery Arcturus (Deborah Harris, Artistic Director) during the 2015 Contact Photography Festival, it was selected by Toronto’s NOW Magazine as one of its “must-see” shows.
A camera, anchored in one spot, frames a bit of space: the façade of a downtown grocery store. Time contracts (14 months & 4 seasons into 35 minutes) and expands (mere seconds stretch out over multiple images). Stationary objects take on a presence, fast moving objects blur beyond recognition. People move in and out of frame, enacting fragmentary, inaccessible dramas or appearing to perform abstract choreography.
Lost in Light takes the moment as the smallest unit of meaning. But how long is a moment?
