Luther Price (Born 1962 in Marlborough, MA; died 2020 in Revere, MA) is known for his work with Super-8 and 16mm film, particularly for constructing films out of discarded prints of documentaries, snippets of Hollywood features, and other fragments of cinema. He physically manipulated this found footage by scratching, distressing, and painting the film surface, or even by burying it in the earth so that natural processes such as rotting and mold growth begin to change the film. Price also experimented with handmade slides, beginning with found film that he painstakingly cut up, reassembled, and altered. Some plates have sandwiched detritus and found materials—from insects to dirt, dust, and glue—finalized in a projected image on the gallery wall. Through his reuse of analogue photographic materials, Price produced beautiful, abstracted images connected to histories of appropriation, abstraction, and experimental film.
Light Fracture is one of two slide works Price made in 2013 that are held by the ICA/Boston. Using slide projectors, he presents the handmade slides as a cycle of moving still images, an arrangement that connects his work to animation and early cinematic tropes. The individual images vary dramatically—from the microscopic to the macroscopic, from silhouettes of monstrous insects to beautiful abstract patterns, from dark earthy tones to brilliant reds and oranges—but taken as a whole, the series consistently captures light as it is projected, refracted, and splintered through the materials. The result is a visually arresting experience that evokes entropy, mortality, and otherworldly visions.
