Confessions of a Filmmaker-Collector

For Gehr, a trip to Europe in 1974 became an unexpected and deeply emotional encounter with remnants of time and history while walking through the streets of Paris, Geneva, and Amsterdam. On this same occasion, in Paris, Gehr came across a little shop—a treasure house—full of ancient optical toys and paper ephemera. The climax of his three-week journey was an encounter with an early phantom ride film in Montreux, Switzerland. The mixture of these three events eventually led to the making of Eureka, Panoramas of the Moving Image, a five-channel installation, as well as Carnival of Shadows, another fivechannel installation.