“Working in the early 1960s with wide strips of cellophane packing tape, Brakhage captured fleeting things — among them, blades of grass, pieces of flower petals, dust, dirt and the diaphanous, decapitated wings from insects. His process revolved around using the tape to produce a series of facsimile filmstrips: wider than the elegant Super-8 that was his hallmark medium (Mothlight, a mere three minutes in length, was actually shot on 16mm) but long and geometric: they’re a suite of attenuated rectangular portraits. The idea of using adhesive tape as a photographic medium (which is effectively what it is, capturing something in time on a single surface) represents the kind of visual simplicity — indeed, the sheer brilliance — of one man’s indefatigable effort to visualize an idea. It is, in a word, astonishing.”
