Vera Lutter

I found this artist during a photography project and her methods of taking photographs go right back to old school but with her own twist.

 This is one of my favourite photographs by Lutter, the slight movement of the gondolas during the exposure give them a wispy appearance in contrast to the solid yet decoratively formed structures behind.

Movement in the pictures of her transport series are the most clear. It is registered as a blur or as ghost like figures, for example in Zeppelin the exposure time for the image was 4 days. 

However the Zepplin spent just 2 of these days in front of the camera as it was taken out for testing; this resulted in the translucent Zepplin that you see here where you can see many of the details of the hanger through the airship.

Lutter practices photography in its elementary form, working with the original principle of light drawn image.

The Camera Obscura technique is one of the oldest methods of writing with light, the camera obscura, literally meaning dark room, is essentially a large pinhole camera.

Lutter begins by setting up large walk in sized cameras using wooden boxes, shipping containers or entire rooms to capture light.

Windows are covered in black plastic, and a tiny hole is cut in the centre to create the aperture.

As light passes through this aperture into a darkened chamber an inverted image appears on the wall opposite.

Huge sheets of photosensitive paper are hung inside the camera opposite the aperture hole, with the distance between the two determining the scale of the image.

The aperture must remain small in order to keep the image in focus; therefore her exposures are necessarily long, ranging from a few hours to days or sometimes even several weeks.

Lutter inhabits her room-sized cameras while her negatives develop, it takes her 20 -30 mins to adjust her eyes to see the projection. Lutter describes what she sees whilst in the camera...

“The fastest movements do not stay in the photograph, but I see the cars driving through the image, I see trains, boats going by, birds and airplanes flying through. It’s like watching a film, but the image is reversed, upside down, and very crisp.”