when I was first asked to do some work
for National Geographic I thought you
know are you sure you have the right guy
you know which I think speaks also well
about the vision that National
Geographic has charted just a quick
little background on some of the work
that I’ve been doing since 1991 I had
been looking at camera obscura
illustrations for a number of years and
essentially the idea is a small box or
big room with a small opening in a dark
room allows an image to actually enter
the room so knowing that this actually
could be recreated I I thought that
maybe an idea would be to photograph the
effect itself during my living room into
a camera obscura cover all the windows
put a little hole in there and let an
image come in it’s sort of like this
light bulb picture this is the most
simple idea of photography a small
opening like a lens allows a light bulb
to come inside a box it’s not you know
you don’t have to have the latest camera
to love the basis of photography so with
that in mind I made my first camera
obscura in 1991 this image actually came
inside the room it just took me a while
to figure out how to expose this and it
turns out that it was an eight-hour
exposure its dim and film is slow but I
was so encouraged I thought wow like
inventor photography or something you
know I really felt like Daguerre and
Talbot and why not so here’s some early
ones that I’ve made and in 80s and 90s
and mind you this is just a whole
letting this in
a more reason once a now in color but
take place over time a nice little
apartment overlooking Central Park West
Central Park allow me to make a spring
image a summer a fall and a winter I
really like Monet a lot and he felt like
it was that kind of meditation on a
place and changes in the seasons the
more recent one which leads me to the
work that I’ve done for National
Geographic I was in West Texas a number
of years ago and I really wanted to make
a picture there but of course there are
no rooms in the desert so I I thought
that maybe if I work on the idea of a
tent or a portable room with a wall I’ll
show you sort of like this ancient of
the air photography where a box can give
you a kind of an image
90 degree angle then I thought about
these early devices that artists used in
photography in not a photography
photography a tent with some kind of
periscope on it allowing an image of the
world to actually come down onto the
sketch pad what a neat idea too to trace
the world and this is again before
photography so thinking about these
devices made me think that a I should
get my own device this is a large tripod
holding a periscope with a lens so an
image like that comes this way and then
through a mirror gets projected down
there at least that was what I wanted it
to do and then somewhere I would have a
camera photographing that event this is
a reminding me of this wonderful
Steinberg drawing where and the idea of
the ground being deep not just in terms
of light and sand all but doubt and you
know duty and thinking about the ground
having all kinds of meaning and milking
something on the ground really made me
excited
this is in Texas our first experiment
there were a number of us setting up
this infernal machine to try to get a
picture and so we really didn’t know
exactly what was going to happen but
eventually the tent was set up looking
at a scene not real dramatic but
interesting we’re looking that way
anyway the picture that came out was
this sandwich natural sandwich of an
image in the nearby landscape actually
projecting on the ground itself and that
felt like hmm that’s a very natural way
of being freaky in other ways what
Photoshop can do right my daughter can
do it for she up in two seconds I have
to go to the desert and do it I like the
idea of truth in photography so this is
a number of other pictures that I’ve
made with that device this is in Maine
dead grass it’s almost a painterly
effect and the Grand Tetons on a
sidewalk
I grew up in Cuba so all I knew about
the US was mostly westerns you know
cowboy movies so my impression of the
West was like wow you know it’s this
grand thing and indeed it is grand so
visiting these places memory realize why
great painters made paintings of these
remarkable landscapes so I went there to
the Golden Gate Bridge celebrating its
anniversary I’m now using a digital
camera which means that it’s a shorter
exposure it’s not ours it’s minutes so
clouds can come in which feels very nice
it feels like a moment in life rather
than a generic six hours
we put the tent on the edge of the
canyon and it was windy too so it was
really weird to feel like you’re making
a picture that all these tourists were
like coming by and saying oh you can
camp here ya know sometimes we realize
it yeah of course just ask the guy but
the idea of the structure the rock
structure beneath me having a
conversation with the largest structure
out there having this meeting ground
between earth to me feels like what I
got into photography in the first place
to make some kind of larger Union take
place
this is Yosemite Valley Thomas Hill
painting and one of the America’s best
artists Carleton Watkins who made the
best you so many pictures I think ever
and this is my version of it on a
sidewalk that’s the the road
William Henry Jackson another great
American photographer may have been I
think it was the first photographer to
actually see all faithful so he made
this picture in in the 1860s 70s and it
must have been amazing and of course
Congress eventually got to see these
pictures and they said oh this is a
no-brainer we got to protect this so I
decided to go to that same place and to
me I think the reason why I’m doing this
kind of work like I do all kinds of
other work is to maybe revisit what’s
been worn out in our brains what’s
become so cliche that we don’t even see
anymore to kind of give maybe Old
Faithful a second look thank you very
much
Oh
for National Geographic I thought you
know are you sure you have the right guy
you know which I think speaks also well
about the vision that National
Geographic has charted just a quick
little background on some of the work
that I’ve been doing since 1991 I had
been looking at camera obscura
illustrations for a number of years and
essentially the idea is a small box or
big room with a small opening in a dark
room allows an image to actually enter
the room so knowing that this actually
could be recreated I I thought that
maybe an idea would be to photograph the
effect itself during my living room into
a camera obscura cover all the windows
put a little hole in there and let an
image come in it’s sort of like this
light bulb picture this is the most
simple idea of photography a small
opening like a lens allows a light bulb
to come inside a box it’s not you know
you don’t have to have the latest camera
to love the basis of photography so with
that in mind I made my first camera
obscura in 1991 this image actually came
inside the room it just took me a while
to figure out how to expose this and it
turns out that it was an eight-hour
exposure its dim and film is slow but I
was so encouraged I thought wow like
inventor photography or something you
know I really felt like Daguerre and
Talbot and why not so here’s some early
ones that I’ve made and in 80s and 90s
and mind you this is just a whole
letting this in
a more reason once a now in color but
take place over time a nice little
apartment overlooking Central Park West
Central Park allow me to make a spring
image a summer a fall and a winter I
really like Monet a lot and he felt like
it was that kind of meditation on a
place and changes in the seasons the
more recent one which leads me to the
work that I’ve done for National
Geographic I was in West Texas a number
of years ago and I really wanted to make
a picture there but of course there are
no rooms in the desert so I I thought
that maybe if I work on the idea of a
tent or a portable room with a wall I’ll
show you sort of like this ancient of
the air photography where a box can give
you a kind of an image
90 degree angle then I thought about
these early devices that artists used in
photography in not a photography
photography a tent with some kind of
periscope on it allowing an image of the
world to actually come down onto the
sketch pad what a neat idea too to trace
the world and this is again before
photography so thinking about these
devices made me think that a I should
get my own device this is a large tripod
holding a periscope with a lens so an
image like that comes this way and then
through a mirror gets projected down
there at least that was what I wanted it
to do and then somewhere I would have a
camera photographing that event this is
a reminding me of this wonderful
Steinberg drawing where and the idea of
the ground being deep not just in terms
of light and sand all but doubt and you
know duty and thinking about the ground
having all kinds of meaning and milking
something on the ground really made me
excited
this is in Texas our first experiment
there were a number of us setting up
this infernal machine to try to get a
picture and so we really didn’t know
exactly what was going to happen but
eventually the tent was set up looking
at a scene not real dramatic but
interesting we’re looking that way
anyway the picture that came out was
this sandwich natural sandwich of an
image in the nearby landscape actually
projecting on the ground itself and that
felt like hmm that’s a very natural way
of being freaky in other ways what
Photoshop can do right my daughter can
do it for she up in two seconds I have
to go to the desert and do it I like the
idea of truth in photography so this is
a number of other pictures that I’ve
made with that device this is in Maine
dead grass it’s almost a painterly
effect and the Grand Tetons on a
sidewalk
I grew up in Cuba so all I knew about
the US was mostly westerns you know
cowboy movies so my impression of the
West was like wow you know it’s this
grand thing and indeed it is grand so
visiting these places memory realize why
great painters made paintings of these
remarkable landscapes so I went there to
the Golden Gate Bridge celebrating its
anniversary I’m now using a digital
camera which means that it’s a shorter
exposure it’s not ours it’s minutes so
clouds can come in which feels very nice
it feels like a moment in life rather
than a generic six hours
we put the tent on the edge of the
canyon and it was windy too so it was
really weird to feel like you’re making
a picture that all these tourists were
like coming by and saying oh you can
camp here ya know sometimes we realize
it yeah of course just ask the guy but
the idea of the structure the rock
structure beneath me having a
conversation with the largest structure
out there having this meeting ground
between earth to me feels like what I
got into photography in the first place
to make some kind of larger Union take
place
this is Yosemite Valley Thomas Hill
painting and one of the America’s best
artists Carleton Watkins who made the
best you so many pictures I think ever
and this is my version of it on a
sidewalk that’s the the road
William Henry Jackson another great
American photographer may have been I
think it was the first photographer to
actually see all faithful so he made
this picture in in the 1860s 70s and it
must have been amazing and of course
Congress eventually got to see these
pictures and they said oh this is a
no-brainer we got to protect this so I
decided to go to that same place and to
me I think the reason why I’m doing this
kind of work like I do all kinds of
other work is to maybe revisit what’s
been worn out in our brains what’s
become so cliche that we don’t even see
anymore to kind of give maybe Old
Faithful a second look thank you very
much
Oh
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