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SOLARGRAPHS

Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire

This exhibition, commissioned by the Domain de Chaumont-sur-Loire, is the culmination of a very specific experiment conducted during Robert Charles Mann’s residency at the château in 2017 and 2018. He installed 12 handmade pinhole cameras to continually record the path of the sun through the sky for six months from the château and its gardens. The exposures were begun on the winter solstice, December 21, 2017 and finished six months later on the summer solstice, June 21, 2018 producing 12 six month continuous exposures for an exhibition held at the château from November 2018 to March 2019.

Solargraph 20180621-11 ©Robert Charles Mann

SOLARGRAPHS
Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire

Robert Charles Mann’s photographs profoundly alter our relationship with images. At first glance, it’s impossible to be certain of the technique used to create his hypnotic solargraphs. The artist, a photographer as well as a musician, explains that his SOLARGRAPH series is, for him, a methodological and conceptual experiment. Seeking to capture the sun’s path through the sky, from the winter solstice to the summer solstice, Mann installs handmade pinhole cameras pointed toward the sky to capture the sun’s trajectory through a continuous, six-month-long exposure. The final image is the result of this single, long, continuous exposure lasting six months. This work thus bridges the gap between traditional techniques of the past and contemporary digital techniques. The images are printed with permanent archival pigments on pure cotton fiber paper. Mann’s large-format photographs brilliantly illustrate the artist’s fascination with the myriad phenomena created by light.

Zacharie Nadar
Connaissance des Arts – May 2019