Perhaps everything is an image – objects, people, even thoughts. When it calls for it, we gather what is most intimate to us, often at arm’s length. Why look too far? Back in 1957, the rst digital image made by Russell Kirsch was of his three-month-old son, Walden. This headshot measured just 5cm by 5cm, 176 pixels on one side, and was created by feeding the image through a rotating drum scanner programmed by the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC). As all baby pictures, before and after, it has an openness that knows no bound, but also a hesitancy that sends a glare past the materiality of the image, the occasion, resolutely puncturing the present, and passing the future.

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