Fruit/Cup, Michael Spano

Exhibition Label: "Art for Kansas: Building the Collection, 1988-1998 (Recent Acquisitions)," Nov-1998, John Pultz and Susan Earle Michael Spano used a nineteenth-century carte-de-visite camera to create this photograph. This camera made commercial portrait photography financially viable in the late 1850s. By making multiple exposures on a single negative, a photographer could processone plate and one print, yet have eight pictures, usually with varied poses, to sell his client. These pictures, mounted on board and usually small, could be given away like visiting cards. In "Fruit/Cup," Spano explores what happens when such a camera is turned on other subjects and moved quickly between exposures. Exhibition Label: "Contemporary Photographs: Rethinking the Genres," Oct-2000, Rachel Epp Buller Spano’s photograph combines a series of scenes from daily life. To create this work, Spano used a nineteenth-century carte-de-visite camera, an apparatus that, beginning in the late 1850s, made commercial portrait photography financially viable. By making multiple exposures on a single negative, a photographer could process one plate and one print, yet have eight pictures to sell. These pictures, usually small and mounted on board, could be given away like visiting cards. In Fruit/Cup, Spano turns the camera on the mundane scene of a man drinking coffee, each frame focusing either on the repetitive action or on the nearby still life.