Weekend of Oct 3rd, 2015
The projection of Laetoli No. 2925 at Illuminus relies on the classic and enduring magic of the illuminated motion picture. It opens a window onto a beach in New England, along with a soundtrack of far-off weather and places. In this “peoplescape” and photograph in motion, the longer one looks, the more there is to discover. The title of the series, Laetoli, is named after the famous “Laetoli Footprints” - a trail of 70 or so footsteps left by pre-human hominids 3.6 million years ago in Tanzania, preserved by chance. The works in this series select and frame documentary sequences from the visible world, showing the activity of people with their environment, materials, and with each other. They are presented in a cinematic space where the viewer can linger without shame or fear or distraction as is often the case in the midst of lived experience. The images are for “looking around” and are offered as a slow yet full image. They offer a circumscribed world, one that is familiar, mysterious, and just out of reach.
Amanda Wild is a filmmaker, documentarian, and photographer. She studied fine art at the Corcoran College of Art in Washington DC, and anthropology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She was born in New Jersey in a suburb of Philadelphia, and moved to Boston six days before September 11, 2001. The sudden onset of smell-blindness in 2008 has steadily influenced her visual work.