Bill Armstrong’s Infinity series is an extensive body of work photographed since 1997. It includes a wide range of portfolios, from figurative to abstract, that are made using a unique process of photographing found images with the camera’s focusing ring set at infinity. This process subjects the images to a series of manipulations—photocopying, cutting, painting, re-photographing—transforms the originals and giving them a new meaning and context. Extreme blurring makes the edges within the collages disappear, so the photographs appear to be seamless, integrated images.
“The nature of visual perception intrigues me: how the eye continually tries to resolve these images, but is unable to do so, and how that is unsettling. And I am drawn to the idea that we can believe something is real, while at the same time knowing it is illusory; that the experience of visual confusion, when the psyche is momentarily derailed, is what frees us to respond emotionally.”