In 2005, Robert Burley began a project documenting the death of traditional photography.  The project titled “Disappearance of Darkness” lead Burley across Canada, Europe and the United States in search signs of this demise, usually in the form of facility closures and well attended building demolitions.  Factories that had been in operation since the beginning of the production of film were closing at an alarming rate.  Photographic film was becoming redundant, its function usurped by the efficiency and popularity of the digital sensor.  "The act of dissolving blocks of silver into ditric acid, mixing it with the tissue of animals and coating it onto film and paper", says Burley, all so the world could partake in one of our most fascinating and important inventions – was coming to a rapid halt. 

Photographic film as we know it has been around for over one hundred and fifty years; it’s near disappearance, in contrast, has only taken a fraction of this time.  Burley’s fascination with this demise was spurred by reflecting on his reliance on these traditional materials over his entire photographic career, and the inevitable questions about what would happen next.  Within his body of work we find images of demolition, abandoned buildings and stripped interiors.   “Implosion-3,  Buildings 65 and 69, Kodak Park, Rochester, 2007” is perhaps the most iconic of them all.  Burley directed his camera at the media as they attempted to capture the moments during and after the demolition of a Kodak building.  The photograph, however, is lit by a strange and eerie glow.  The dust and debris, reflecting and obscuring the light from above, seemed to make taking any kind of photograph of the building’s implosion impossible. 

In its final moments, the Kodak building escaped any form of representation, its remnants instead creating a great, blinding veil that almost begged the question: with the death of analogue photography, what will happen next?