There is a radical shift in Campus’ work from 1979 through the 1980s. He stopped working with video entirely and took up traditional still photography. There is also a major shift in subject matter as he moved away from the body and self and begun to look outside, to nature and landscape photography. “For me what was important was not the switch from video to photography, but from the interior to the exterior. The interior examinations became overwhelming…. I got very interested in nature. A lot of it was an escape from what was going on in the city. It was a place where all the things that were bothering me would disappear. Then, very quickly, about 1982, it became the subject of my work.”.[7] These photographs feature many images of stones, plus buildings, bridges, landscapes, trees and sticks, subjects that persisted in his work throughout the 1980s. Campus describes his search in these works as “looking for what I called “resonance” in what I was feeling.”
In 1982 Campus began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design, and moved to New York University in 1983.
In Inside Out (1987), Campus worked with photographed ‘floating’ stones using enlarged photo-projection from a slide projector. This work superimposes the light of the projector upon the natural light of images of stones. It reflects Campus’ desire to poeticise the everyday, to “discover timelessness in everyday life. ”[8]
In 1988 he started working with computer imaging, producing a series of still works, renewing an interest in experimentation with the structural characteristics of the digital imaging medium, using photo-montage, digital drawing and digital image manipulation. Many of these experimental techniques would lead into his next period of work with a series of new moving image video pieces.