Reaction Paper #1

I really love physics, and am continually amazed when pure science collides with other, seemingly unrelated interests of mine. On Saturday, a series of photographs titled “Sunburn” captured my imagination by their fusion of beautiful photography with scientific thought.

The process is deceptively simple: The artist loads a homemade, large format camera with photo paper and takes an extended exposure picture. Over the course of several hours, the sun not only transforms the negative into a positive, but literally burns a hole or a path into the paper.

I was mesmerized by this method of allowing the process of photography to be performed by the sun itself. It spoke to my analytical mind and my “wanna-be” scientific imagination. I already admired photography for its ability to capture a sense of time, from single moments to several hours, on the page; it had never occurred to me before this that the process of taking a picture—of exposing film to light—could be pushed to achieve this effect.

The three pieces, particularly “Sunburned GSP# 358” made me more aware, for a while, of how great an impact the sun—and light—have on our lives on a daily basis, and how important light is in art. The sun, as the subject of the three photos, seemed to be screaming from the frames something to the effect of, “Here I come!” and reminded me of the myth of Phaeton stealing Helios’s chariot, driving the sun across the sky and eventually losing control. The burnt edges of the solar path on the photo paper reminded me that the world is wild, and we only think we’re in charge.

The visible effect of the physics of taking a photograph also made me wonder about how to push my own drawings out past the edges, and although I doubt I’ll be burning holes in barrier paper this term, it is enticing to imagine the possibilities.