Clicking on the images below will take you to the student artwork!
Photo I focuses on analog photography starting with the construction of a camera obscura, creating cyanotypes, moving to photograms, constructing and using a pinhole camera, and finally capturing images on film using a 35mm SLR camera - developing film and using the darkroom to develop prints. When time allows, we also use the medium format Holga camera.
Cyanotype |
A photographic process that produces a cyan-blue print invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842. The process uses iron compounds instead of silver salts. To intensify the color, hydrogen peroxide can be added. As the print dries it will oxidize and turn blue. Anna Atkins, often referred to as the first female photographer, used this process in 1843 to create a portfolio of botanical images.
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Photogram |
William Fox Talbot is attributed with inventing this cameraless photographic process where an image is captured by placing objects directly onto photosensitive paper. Photograms, or rayographs according to Man Ray, are used to introduce students to the darkroom and the process of developing silver gelatin prints.
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Pinhole
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There are several references to the camera obscura (pre-photographic paper to capture images) which is also known as the lensless pinhole camera (post-photographic paper/film to capture images), throughout history. Mo Ti, a Chinese philosopher, first wrote about light traveling in a straight line in the 5th century B.C.. Other well known references include Aristotle (4th century B.C.), Alhazen (Arabian physicist and mathematician in the 10th century A.D.), and Leonardo da Vinci (in the 16th century.) In this assignment, students capture a negative image with a pinhole camera (a metal container with a very small opening) and then use the darkroom to transform those into a positive that we recognize as a traditional black and white photograph today.
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"Who would believe that so small a space could contain the image of all the universe? O mighty process! What talent can avail to penetrate a nature such as these? What tonque will it be that can unfold so great a wonder? Verily, none! This it is that guides the human discourse to the considering of divine things. Here the figures, here the colors, here all the images of every part of the universe are contracted to a point. O what a point is so marvelous!" ~ Leonardo da Vinci