Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Mutant Materials 10

Just found an article on the facebook page for New Glass Art and Photography Berlin featuring one of my favourite images - the daguerrotype that is credited with being the worlds first proper photograph.
We looked at this image in our art theory class earlier this year and I think it is just beautiful so it was nice to see it pop up on this link from their page.





The story is that the exposure time for this image was ten minutes so all the people that were passing by in the street didn't stay still long enough to register on the photo - all except for the guy who was standing having his shoes shined. This is what makes the image look quite strange - it seems like this normally busy city street is totally deserted in the middle of the day except for the one guy having his shoes shined seemingly oblivious to the fact that the city is deserted.

This last image brings me back to the beginning of my work on Mutant Materials for the moment - to where I started in post one with a Daguerrotype photograph and the history of photographic images on glass. 
For my own work I am very interested in the power of these old images, in the history, stories and memories contained in them. For next year I am very much looking forward to exploring the ideas that these images bring up and to exploring how they might cross over into glass and light.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130754296&sc=fb&cc=fp

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