Circuitry is the most difficult part of a camera to extract without damage to the part. The level of difficulty rises with the level of electronic complexity. In vintage cameras the circuit boards are rigid and joined with fasteners and fusible solids. In late model electronic film cameras the circuits appear as a folded motherboard encrusted with processors that control 99 percent of the camera’s function. These modern circuits fold around corners throughout the inside of the camera and once extracted must be flattened and cleaned before they can be imaged.

In July 2013 I presented an exhibition of works titled Circuit Scans. It was a installation of photographic prints made by placing the circuitry extracted from the camera onto a flatbed scanner and inverting the scanned image. This inversion creates a negative image in which the colors are reversed to their compliments. For instance, a modern flexible camera circuit is amber in color so it appears as a blue-violet in the image. Many of the vintage camera circuits are rigid green boards and appear as varieties of magenta. The scanner can be set to make an image from either reflected or transmitted light. In this series the photographs are made by transmission, the light passes through the circuit. This essentially transforms the electronic camera circuitry into a negative from which to make an image.