Transfer was commissioned by Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and realized there over two days in February. It is one of several happenings and activities for which Kaprow incorporated the action of photographic documentation into the program itself. Doing so was a clever way to “eliminate the audience” as Kaprow wished, while still generating compelling images for posterity and self-promotion. For this realization of Transfer, a Wesleyan student named Andrew Glantz played the role of photographer. Kaprow’s zeroing in on “triumphal photo” language of the program slyly acknowledges that photographs often misrepresent events by focusing on the high points at the expense of the events’ experiential gestalts. The stark contrast between the black-and-white photographs of Transfer and what we can imagine as the incredibly bright colors of the oil barrels drives home this line of questioning.
Andrew Glantz/Zenith Design.
