Jan Dibbets and HIS Perspective

Jan Dibbets in conversation with Sharon Boothroyd
London, UK
Interview conducted by phone 19 April 2013: 

"For Dibbets, the fundamental goal is to unmask the seemingly self-evident role of photography as a legitimate depiction of the world and to show how even simple operations can expose photography’s illusion." - Brain Wallis (ICP, NY)

Jan Dibbets-- Sea 0-135 (degrees)

Jan Dibbers -- Perspective Correction Series (1968)

This work was made in a park in Amsterdam. It is concerned with illusion and reality, the difference between what the camera sees and what the eye sees. As its title suggests, Dibbets wanted to 'correct' the recessive perspective of a large area of ground. He decided to use light coloured rope that would clearly mark off a cross shaped area of grass. He used much thicker rope for the two top, more distant, right-angles, so that they would appear to be in the same plane as those at the bottom of the photograph. The nearest right angles are approximately eight inches long, whereas those farthest away are each over thirty feet long. Grass was chosen because it did not have obvious perspectival references.