Double Exposure

In Double Exposure, a 1950s detective film made for TV is projected onto the screen of a monitor, at the same time that images come up to the monitor from a tape I compiled, alternating images of Reagan being questioned at the Iran Contra Hearings with Air Force training films for WWII and Vietnam. I employed a somewhat random process to compose each frame of juxtaposed images appearing on the screen—I never started both pictures rolling at the same point. In the detective film, a model American Family, very much like the one featured in Leave It to Beaver, is pictured. The father of the family is the detective and he brings the teenage troublemakers around. The yellowish color images are the film and the bluish images are from the tape. I was interested in the collapsing of time and the collapsing of fiction and reality. The density of one image delimits the visibility of the other, therefore unexpectedly highlighting different features of each into one composite image.

Here, a tower and a parachute during parachute training reflect and make visible the family scene in the film.

The detective in the film finds the "juvenile delinquents" hiding in a train on whose wall is inscribed "Help Us, Help Us Please." There is a B-52 bomber flying by from the Air Force training sequence (tape), as it drops a bomb in preparation for combat in Vietnam.

An airfield and a discussion between the detective and the teenagers.

Some very amusing coincidences happen during the course of each run. Here, one of the juvenile delinquents who is being brought in by a policeman has the same expression on his face as Reagan.

Here another one of the JD's in the film looks as if she is extremely suspicious (of Reagan) almost as if she could be sitting on a jury.

The detective's assistant (on the phone) in the film looks very much like the prosecuting attorney in the Iran Contra hearings.

The lead teenager in the film overlays a soldier ready to parachute out during training for the conflict in Vietnam.