Saturday, February 18, 2012

Glowing Silhouettes Made of Thousands of Sun Streaming Pinholes




I first came across British artist Christopher Bucklow's beautiful work while at Pulse Miami this past December. Danziger Gallery in New York exhibited one of his pieces that seemed to be glowing. Delving more deeply into it, I found out that Bucklow is able to create these radiant artworks, under the series name Guests, by a unique multi-step process that the gallery describes as "complex and laborious."

From Danziger Gallery:

"Bucklow begins by projecting the shadow of his sitter on a large sheet of aluminum foil and tracing its outline. He then makes about twenty thousand small pinholes in the foil silhouette (one for each day of the average human lifespan). Using a contraption of his own device that places the foil over a large sheet of photographic paper, Bucklow wheels his homemade 'camera' out into daylight and pulls the 'shutter' to briefly expose the paper to direct sunlight. Thus each finished picture becomes a kind of photogram silhouette composed of thousands of pinhole photographs of the sun. The intensity of light on a given day and the length of exposure create unique color variations on how the resulting piece appears."

Buckow's cast of characters are drawn from his circle of acquaintances and, unlike conventional photography, each image is unique and unrepeatable.






Images via Danziger Gallery, Christopher Bucklow, and Harry beee.

Christopher Bucklow's website


 
 
 
 

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