Amphitheatre

Amphitheatre is a work from the series The Whites, exhibited in 2009 and 2010. The photographs in this series were made using this rarefied form of production: sheet film exposed through a camera manufactured half a century ago, then hand processed, printed on traditional fiber-based paper and toned in selenium. In a twist on the great modernist dictum of function following form, here subject informs technique. The Whites is McLean's reckoning with the retrospective nature of all photographs. It is only through these fixed moments that we are allowed to see that which no longer exists.