Be seeing you...?

27/05/2010

The more observant of you will have noticed some strange looking, small, black objects positioned here around the building at the moment? They are "pinhole" cameras designed and made by artist/photographer Anthony Carr for a project he is working on with us here at UCMK. The cameras are working right now, taking photographs of the interior of the building from their individual vantage points so this is an ongoing work in progress actually happening right now. However, there is a twist: the exposures for the photographs will be very long - months long in fact and the accumulation of a series of long exposures.

The cameras have a black disc positioned in front of the "lens" (basically a simple "pin-hole) with a section of carefully calculated width cut-out of it corresponding to the length of the exposure made each day which is then mounted and rotates on a clock mechanism. The resulting exposures will be so long that anything that is not stationary for more than a few hours will either not show up in the finished pictures or will appear merely as a partially un-recognisable trace image. So don't worry - you will not appear in these images as anything other than a blurry, ghost like mist!

Anthony Carr is a London-based artist whose work is often project-led, with photographic series produced as a direct response to a particular location or situation.  Much of his recent interest has been in capturing images taken during extremely long exposures, which can last from anywhere between a few weeks to several months.

"It's a very interesting and exciting project" says Adrian Pinckard, head of Art, Design & Media at UCMK and curator of the UCMK galleries. "Fascinating parallels can be found between this idea and our increasingly pervasive ‘surveillance society' where cameras positioned on high in our towns and cities record our every move. However, the image quality, techniques and methodology used by Anthony hark back to a much older era when photography was still in its infancy and light sensitive materials needed much longer exposure than today. I also like the low-tech. approach which is a wonderful antidote to the increasing complexities of much contemporary image capture technologies. On a deeper level, I am intrigued by the metaphorical potential of the images, how they might allude to ideas of, flux, continuous change and even mortality itself."

Says Anthony, "I'm thrilled to be allowed the time and space to develop a new body of work at UCMK and am very grateful to Adrian for giving me this opportunity. I have been working with pinhole photography and pinhole cameras for a few years, but more recently I have started to incorporate clock mechanisms into the cameras to give me more control of the exposure. It is this control which is a crucial element of the project at UCMK as it will permit me to have the camera shutter ‘open' during lunchtime, the busiest part of the day. This in turn will maximise the effect of human activity on film. This particular method of image capture is more akin to a time-lapse technique rather than simply a long exposure. This is the first time I have installed the clock cameras indoors, so ultimately I see the project at UCMK as a chance to experiment, providing for me a great opportunity to develop my practice."

The resulting large scale colour prints will form part of an exhibition of Anthony's work here at the UCMK galleries in April & May next year and we are delighted to host this fascinating and thought provoking work.

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