Artwork copyright Ford Gilbreath. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artwork copyright Ford Gilbreath. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission.

Flatscan, Schmitz Park, Seattle, November 8, 2003, 2003

Ford Gilbreath
American (born 1951)

Location: Peninsula College, Port Angeles

About the Artwork

Artist Ford Gilbreath created the "Flatscan" series by experimenting with a computer scanner and a laptop, outdoors in the woods. He removed the scanner's lid and used the scanner to directly capture images of nature. The result is a sharp image of what was closest to the scanner's glass, and a blurry view of everything else. Gilbreath describes the results as "The glass of the scanner seemed like a membrane between the outside world and the inside world, similar to our eardrums."

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Peninsula College.

About the Artist

Gilbreath earned a Bachelor of Science degree in cinema and photography from Southern Illinois University and a Master of Arts degree in photography from Central Washington University in Ellensburg in 1974. He has served as visiting faculty at The Evergreen State College in Olympia and as a digital photography technician for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer news. Gilbreath lived and worked in Seattle for forty years and moved to the Palouse area of Eastern Washington in 2018. He has been showing his photographs at the Blue Sky Gallery, in Portland, Oregon since 1975.