Matthew Buckingham - A Man in the Crowd

In Edgar Allan Poe's story, "The Man of the Crowd" (1840), a young man secretly follows an enigmatic older man through London's city streets for twenty-four hours, trying to discover something about him. The film loop installation and artist's book "A Man of the Crowd," locates the story in Vienna, a city that retains its nineteenth century plan and organization. "The Man." becomes "A Man.": a film camera is introduced into Poe's narrative and paradoxically becomes a "central character." The installation spatializes the symmetry, doubling, and self-reflexivity of the Poe story: the 16mm film is projected through a freestanding two-way mirror that both echoes a window in the story and reflects and doubles the projected image in the exhibition space. The mirror also multiplies and displaces the viewer while framing other spectators in the space.