DePaul Exhibit Portrays Images Of City Using Unusual Camera
By John Dodge
CHICAGO (CBS) -- In a world of high-definition, digital imagery, a group of artists has turned back to the origins of photography, using, of all things, a large shipping container as a camera and Chicago as the landscape.
The results, which are the subject of an upcoming exhibit at the DePaul Art Museum, "break down the photographic process to its most basic and raw elements," said Greg Harris, the exhibit's curator.
The images provide an interesting juxtaposition of a modern city skyline displayed with a quality of an early 20th century photograph.
No iPhone panoramas, or Instagram filters, used here.
"It makes people step back and think about how photographs originally came into the world, and that is really important in a time when our lives are inundated and saturated with digital images," Harris said.
The pictures were taken by one of the world's largest pinhole cameras. Some of the photos from the display are pictured here, two of them along Lake Michigan and another taken along a rail road in Gary, Ind. (Click on the images to enlarge.)
Artists Lauren Bon, Richard Nielsen and Tristan Duke fashioned a small hole into standard shipping container, turning it into the equivalent of the first-generation cameras.
The pinhole camera technique involves fashioning a hole on the side of a darkened box, in this case the shipping container. A photograph can be made when an image is transferred to photographic paper inside. Because of its size, the Liminal Camera also doubles as a darkroom.
Last fall, the shipping container rolled through Chicago. Some of the images that will be on display are up to eight-feet long.
"Liminal Infrastructure" will run at the DePaul Art Museum beginning May 14.
The DePaul Art Museum at 935 W. Fullerton, just east of the CTA's Fullerton 'L' stop, is open Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.
