The Enigma Room challenges perception–the fact of the photograph versus the mystery of digital alchemy. In this work, Ed Kashi allows coding to transform his extensive archive, spanning the globe over the course of four decades. Kashi has often been at the forefront of experimentation with visual language, and for this installation he embraces coding as the new mode of creation and consumption of photography.
In The Enigma Room, Kashi weighs truth against reality, searching for where the two intersect, and where they diverge. Through digital translation, this work weaves photographs, video, and audio, transporting the viewer to discover new planes of subjective realities. This visual journey immerses us in the physical and transcendent elements of life through cycles of chaos, calm, celebration, and rebirth.
The Enigma Room leverages the computational image to a new level of experimentation. Together with Michael Curry, Brenda Bingham, and Rachel Dennis, Kashi seeks to push the evolution of photography by deploying technology as a tool on par with the camera. The installation’s abstract connections link images across time, place, and context. The result is a dreamlike reverie that exposes the enigma of life.
