There are three components to White Desert; a large digital print, a small installation work, and the large hanging installation piece.

The impetus for White Desert began in the titular region of the Sahara. While there, I felt as if I had stepped into the set of an epic film — a feeling that is always with me when I am in foreign environments. Equally, however, when in unfamiliar environments, my thoughts tend to wander back to familiar things, to commonalities — perhaps seeking some semblance of normalcy amid the chaos of the new and unfamiliar.

The digital print, White Desert is a delirium of moments caught and reassembled into a large photo-collage that reads like a film strip. Reading left to right, the work begins in Cairo and weaves itself through the White Desert in Egypt, crosses the Sahara Desert and arrives in downtown Montreal. In one segment a lamp post outside my house (in Canada) becomes the light that hovers like an alien presence, while the white jeep symbolizes the “safe'“ house for travel and tourism, and perhaps even “home” (a word, for me, that carries more unbearable weight and lightness than I care to admit). This collage enabled me to create new a geographical location, rooted in ‘real’ experience but remembered as a single imagined moment.

Maquette for a Filmic Moment replicates the central scene from the White Desert print into a small installation piece, providing a more ‘intimate epic.’ A real time video from outside the gallery) is projected onto the miniature outdoor screen.

Triumph: Reversing Forward uses the wooden dashboard of the Triumph TR6 (sports car), as an automated flaneur. A video projection of roads moving forward through my eyes, is from a rearview mirror–hanging above the dashboard. 

Artwork Medium/Dimensions:
White Desert Panorama, Rare Earth magnets, 6 –Archival Inkjet Prints on Epson Matte each measuring 4 x 6 ft (122 x 183cm), 2005
Maquette for a Filmic Moment, HO Size Miniatures, frosted Plexiglas, white sand, video projection from a surveillance camera hanging outside of the gallery space, Dimensions variable, 2005
Triumph: Reversing Forward, rear view mirror, Triumph TR6 dashboard, invisible thread, video projector, Dimensions variable, 2005

Exhibitions:
2005 White Desert,Gallery Optica, Montreal, QC., (part of Mois de la Photo Montreal, QC.
2006 White Desert, Encuentros Abiertos, Festival de la Luz, Buenos Aires, Argentina,
2007 Triumph: Reversing Forward, Culture Crash exhibition, SAW Gallery, Ottawa. ON., in conjunction with the Ottawa International Auto show, 2007.

Reviews:
De Julio-Paquin, Jean, “Le spectateur et l’oeuvre photographique,” Vie des arts, #201, Winter 2006
Arden, Paul, “Ramlochand: White Desert”, Artpress #319, January 2005
Crevier, Lyne “Ramona Ramlochand”, Ici, September 2005