Sfumato or, Print: Like a Vanishing Point Grown Over by its Picture Plane

Abstract

In turning toward that which has fallen out of use, one approaches the threshold between presence and passing; between knowing and forgetting. It is the place, perhaps the unexpected pause, where language and loss meet. This essay speculates on the particular apparatus of print, the making and unmaking of its medium in a time of technological transition, and endeavors to locate its place within a congested space of language, memory and the outmoded. The conceit of Sfumato announced in the title of this essay and carried throughout echoes such considerations about what it means to make print now. It brings forward an apparatus historically inscribed, a tool, or armature from which images are composed, yet one subject to time and its corrosive atmosphere. Neither to be discarded and forgotten, nor blindly used as an instrument of utility, but rather brought forward through the contingencies of time as a material and metaphoric occurrence.