Douglas McCulloh
Encyclopedia
Douglas McCulloh is an American photographer notable for conceptual photographic projects based on “systematic randomness” and chance operations. McCulloh’s work is “an extension of the traditions of street photography
, social documentary photography
, oral history
and Surrealist
chance operations,” states photo historian Jonathan Green. “As such, it is grounded in some of the century’s most powerful conceptual currents.” McCulloh is one of six photographers who in 2006 transformed an F-18 jet hangar into the world’s largest camera to make the world’s largest photograph. McCulloh also curates exhibitions, most notably Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists, the first major museum exhibition of work by blind photographers. McCulloh, under the nom-de-plume
“Quoteman,” has also collected and posted online thousands of quotation
s about photography.
from the University of California, Santa Barbara
in renaissance history and sociology and an M.F.A.
from Claremont Graduate University
in photography and digital media. McCulloh writes that his “mother is a refugee and my father is a geologist.” Because of an upbringing that highlighted both uncontrollable change and deep time, McCulloh states he “has believed since childhood that the world operates mainly by chance.”
in character, using chance systems to drive large photographic projects. He is clear about the goal: “Chance liberates us from the limitations of our intention,” McCulloh writes. “Chance subverts control, allowing art to become an opening into the world’s full complexity.” “Everybody feels like they have control over things,” McCulloh told interviewer Marilyn Thomsen in 2003, “but I think the world mostly operates by strange chance. If the world operates by chance, why not use [chance] as a way of encountering the world directly?” In 2009, McCulloh summarized his methods: “I create systems driven by chance operations: random sampling, chance drawings, map transect
s. Then I set the systems in motion and record what chance provides.” Art critic Christopher Miles positioned McCulloh’s strategy within art history: “In order to take both his own preconceptions and popular constructions out of the picture, Douglas McCulloh has done something clever and simple. McCulloh merely merged the tradition of social documentary photography
á la Robert Frank
with the Surrealist approach of creating a system that forces the artist to act at the mercy of chance.”
that select one random quarter-mile square, according to a book on the project. McCulloh then travels to that quarter-mile square with a single camera and 18mm wide angle lens
, speaking “with almost everyone he encounters” and making more than 20,000 photographs. “McCulloh’s working method avoids pitfalls by adopting the Dada
ist strategy of leaving things to chance,” stated Los Angeles Times art critic William Wilson. “He selects areas at random, spending a day shooting whatever he finds – beach, slum or riverbed slime. A traveling exhibition of Chance Encounters was curated by California Museum of Photography director Jonathan Green.
camera and studio lighting, McCulloh and collaborator Jacques Garnier made photographs on beaches in California and Florida over a seven year period. “Beaches are half display, half voyeurism
,” stated the Southeast Museum of Photography
about the project. “This is the precise terrain of photography – one side posing, the other looking. Cameras belong on the beach.” The photographers set up studio lighting at crowded beaches and “sample the passing parade like scientists who periodically dip water out of a flowing stream.” The resulting photographs are “infinitely less guarded than posed portraits,” states arts writer Laura Stewart. “They tell vivid stories about the beach and its people, and about those of us who are given the unusual freedom to stare.” Kevin Miller, director of the Southeast Museum of Photography
in Daytona Beach, Florida
, originated an exhibition and book on the project. The work has also been shown at museums including the Laguna Art Museum
, Autry National Center of the American West
, and California Museum of Photography.
. A short documentary about the project reveals the working methodology – four digital shooting stations built into the fair’s fine art pavilion; one image of each person is made and a database created with subject’s answers to five questions: first name, age, gender, and zip code, and “What makes you unique?” 20,000 Portraits was in the vanguard of database-driven art projects and has been shown widely, most prominently in the LA Freewaves
2002 New Media Biennial in Los Angeles
.
in Orange County, California
. As of September 2007, the six photographers – Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, and Clayton Spada – had made more than 90,000 photographs, according to reports published by arts writer Liz Goldner. For 50 years, the 4,700-acre El Toro base was at the heart of Marine Corps air operations, playing pivotal roles in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War. In an extensive essay, art critic and curator Mark Johnstone, equates the ambitious scope and scale of the Legacy Project to other major photographic surveys, specifically the geographic surveys of the American West in the 1800s, the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration
(1935–1942), and the National Endowment for the Arts
Surveys (1976–1981). Legacy Project work has been shown in many exhibitions, including Laguna Art Museum
, Chapman University
, Art Center College of Design
, Cypress College
, Orange Coast College
, and the City of Los Angeles
Angels Gate Cultural Center.
at a charity auction
. He then spent hundreds of hours at the place he named “Dream Street,” producing 12,891 photos, 47½ hours of recordings, three bankers’ boxes of notes, maps and e-mails” and ultimately a book. The 134-home, 40-acre subdivision
is a microcosm
of the new economy, a site where issues of race and gender, immigration and exploitation, hopes and dreams animate a classic California landscape. Susan Brenneman, writing in the Los Angeles Times
, called Dream Street “a classic tale, recast for Southern California
: the American dream
, tied to the almighty dollar and abundant cheap labor, dependent, equally, on self-deception and inextinguishable hope.” “For those of us who live on one of California’s streets of dreams,” writes author D.J. Waldie
“the history of how this one was made is of enormous importance as a warning and a guide.”
“L.A. Neighborhoods Project.” “The result,” states photographer and writer Aline Smithson, “is a massive and multi-layered artistic inquiry. Map-driven and infused with data and first-hand narrative
, the project moves beyond traditions of the isolated photographic image. Instead the project emphasizes complexity, multiplicity, extreme volume, and the interplay of image, data, map, and text.” McCulloh’s Hollywood work has been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe and has become part of the permanent photo archive
of the City of Los Angeles.
jet hangar transformed into a giant camera. The 3,505.75 square-foot (325.44 m²) photograph was made to mark the end of 165 years of film/chemistry-based photography and the start of the age of digital photography. It was made by The Legacy Group; (Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, and Clayton Spada). Dimensions of the photograph are 31 feet, 7 inches (9.62 meters) high x 111 feet (33.83 meters) wide. Aspect ratio
is 3.47:1. The photograph is of the control tower and runways at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station El Toro
, Orange County, California
. The exposure was 35 minutes long and development took 5 hours, 70 people and 1,800 gallons (6,814 liters) of black-and-white
chemistry. The Great Picture has been written about in more than 500 publications, states art writer Liz Goldner, including Art in America
, Photographie, AfterImage, Juxtapoz, Black and White Magazine, Los Angeles Times
, and Chicago Tribune
.
art critic Christopher Knight stated that the “87 works by 11 artists and one collective” are “more akin to Conceptual art than to traditional camera-work.” Artists included in Sight Unseen are Ralph Baker, Evgen Bavčar, Henry Butler
, Pete Eckert, Bruce Hall, Annie Hesse, Rosita McKenzie, Gerardo Nigenda, Michael Richard
, Seeing With Photography Collective, Kurt Weston, and Alice Wingwall. Sight Unseen was shown at UCR/California Museum of Photography from May 2 to August 29, 2009, and has since traveled to the Kennedy Center for the Arts
in Washington, D.C.
; Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City
; and Flacon, Moscow
. The exhibition is the first major museum exhibition of blind photographers, states Stacy Davies in ArtSlant. Writing for Time Magazine
, Matt Kettman quotes McCulloh on the conceptual underpinning of the work: “The whole trajectory of modern art for the last 100 years has been toward the concept of art as mental construction, and blind photography comes from that place. They’re creating that image in their head first — really elaborate, fully realized visions — and then bringing some version of that vision into the world for the rest of us to see.”
Street photography
Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions and other settings....
, social documentary photography
Social documentary photography
Social documentary photography may be defined as the act of recording, with a camera, human beings in their natural condition. Often is also refers to a socially critical genre of photography dedicated to showing the life of underprivileged or disadvantaged people.-Origin of social documentary...
, oral history
Oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...
and Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
chance operations,” states photo historian Jonathan Green. “As such, it is grounded in some of the century’s most powerful conceptual currents.” McCulloh is one of six photographers who in 2006 transformed an F-18 jet hangar into the world’s largest camera to make the world’s largest photograph. McCulloh also curates exhibitions, most notably Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists, the first major museum exhibition of work by blind photographers. McCulloh, under the nom-de-plume
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
“Quoteman,” has also collected and posted online thousands of quotation
Quotation
A quotation or quote is the repetition of one expression as part of another one, particularly when the quoted expression is well-known or explicitly attributed by citation to its original source, and it is indicated by quotation marks.A quotation can also refer to the repeated use of units of any...
s about photography.
Life
McCulloh holds B.A. degreesBachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
from the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
in renaissance history and sociology and an M.F.A.
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
from Claremont Graduate University
Claremont Graduate University
Claremont Graduate University is a private, all-graduate research university located in Claremont, California, a city east of downtown Los Angeles...
in photography and digital media. McCulloh writes that his “mother is a refugee and my father is a geologist.” Because of an upbringing that highlighted both uncontrollable change and deep time, McCulloh states he “has believed since childhood that the world operates mainly by chance.”
Career
McCulloh’s art is conceptualConceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
in character, using chance systems to drive large photographic projects. He is clear about the goal: “Chance liberates us from the limitations of our intention,” McCulloh writes. “Chance subverts control, allowing art to become an opening into the world’s full complexity.” “Everybody feels like they have control over things,” McCulloh told interviewer Marilyn Thomsen in 2003, “but I think the world mostly operates by strange chance. If the world operates by chance, why not use [chance] as a way of encountering the world directly?” In 2009, McCulloh summarized his methods: “I create systems driven by chance operations: random sampling, chance drawings, map transect
Transect
A transect is a path along which one records and counts occurrences of the phenomena of study .It requires an observer to move along a fixed path and to count occurrences along the path and, at the same time, obtain the distance of the object from the path...
s. Then I set the systems in motion and record what chance provides.” Art critic Christopher Miles positioned McCulloh’s strategy within art history: “In order to take both his own preconceptions and popular constructions out of the picture, Douglas McCulloh has done something clever and simple. McCulloh merely merged the tradition of social documentary photography
Social documentary photography
Social documentary photography may be defined as the act of recording, with a camera, human beings in their natural condition. Often is also refers to a socially critical genre of photography dedicated to showing the life of underprivileged or disadvantaged people.-Origin of social documentary...
á la Robert Frank
Robert Frank
Robert Frank , born in Zürich, Switzerland, is an important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 photobook titled The Americans, was influential, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and skeptical outsider's view of American...
with the Surrealist approach of creating a system that forces the artist to act at the mercy of chance.”
Chance Encounters (1992-2002)
Chance Encounters is a photographic sampling project controlled by a map gridded into 5,151 quarter-mile squares that encompass all of urban Los Angeles County. McCulloh begins each day of photography by pulling chance coordinatesGeographic coordinate system
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on the Earth to be specified by a set of numbers. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represent vertical position, and two or three of the numbers represent horizontal position...
that select one random quarter-mile square, according to a book on the project. McCulloh then travels to that quarter-mile square with a single camera and 18mm wide angle lens
Wide-angle lens
From a design perspective, a wide angle lens is one that projects a substantially larger image circle than would be typical for a standard design lens of the same focal length; this enables either large tilt & shift movements with a view camera, or lenses with wide fields of view.More informally,...
, speaking “with almost everyone he encounters” and making more than 20,000 photographs. “McCulloh’s working method avoids pitfalls by adopting the Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ist strategy of leaving things to chance,” stated Los Angeles Times art critic William Wilson. “He selects areas at random, spending a day shooting whatever he finds – beach, slum or riverbed slime. A traveling exhibition of Chance Encounters was curated by California Museum of Photography director Jonathan Green.
On the Beach (2000-2007)
With a high resolutionImage resolution
Image resolution is an umbrella term that describes the detail an image holds. The term applies to raster digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail....
camera and studio lighting, McCulloh and collaborator Jacques Garnier made photographs on beaches in California and Florida over a seven year period. “Beaches are half display, half voyeurism
Voyeurism
In clinical psychology, voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other activity usually considered to be of a private nature....
,” stated the Southeast Museum of Photography
Southeast Museum of Photography
The Southeast Museum of Photography is located in Daytona Beach, Florida, on the campus of Daytona State College. It opened in 1992, and moved to a new facility in 2007....
about the project. “This is the precise terrain of photography – one side posing, the other looking. Cameras belong on the beach.” The photographers set up studio lighting at crowded beaches and “sample the passing parade like scientists who periodically dip water out of a flowing stream.” The resulting photographs are “infinitely less guarded than posed portraits,” states arts writer Laura Stewart. “They tell vivid stories about the beach and its people, and about those of us who are given the unusual freedom to stare.” Kevin Miller, director of the Southeast Museum of Photography
Southeast Museum of Photography
The Southeast Museum of Photography is located in Daytona Beach, Florida, on the campus of Daytona State College. It opened in 1992, and moved to a new facility in 2007....
in Daytona Beach, Florida
Daytona Beach, Florida
Daytona Beach is a city in Volusia County, Florida, USA. According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the city has a population of 64,211. Daytona Beach is a principal city of the Deltona – Daytona Beach – Ormond Beach, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area, which the census bureau estimated had...
, originated an exhibition and book on the project. The work has also been shown at museums including the Laguna Art Museum
Laguna Art Museum
The Laguna Art Museum is a museum located in Laguna Beach, California on Pacific Coast Highway.An exhibition titled ...
, Autry National Center of the American West
Autry National Center
The Autry National Center of the American West is an intercultural center and museum in Los Angeles, California that celebrates the diversity and history of the American West through three important institutions: the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of the American West, and the...
, and California Museum of Photography.
20,000 Portraits (2001)
McCulloh and collaborator Ted Fisher led 68 artists, photographers, and volunteers in a project that photographed 20,558 visitors to the Los Angeles County FairLos Angeles County Fair
The inaugural Los Angeles County Fair, now known as the L.A. County Fair, opened Oct. 17, 1922, and ran for five days through October 21, 1922, in a former beet field in Pomona, California. Highlights of the Fair’s first year were harness racing, chariot races and an airplane wing-walking...
. A short documentary about the project reveals the working methodology – four digital shooting stations built into the fair’s fine art pavilion; one image of each person is made and a database created with subject’s answers to five questions: first name, age, gender, and zip code, and “What makes you unique?” 20,000 Portraits was in the vanguard of database-driven art projects and has been shown widely, most prominently in the LA Freewaves
LA Freewaves
LA Freewaves is a Los Angeles based nonprofit organization that advocates for and exhibits uncensored independent new media from around the world. Media art works include experimental video and film , DVDs, websites, installations, and video billboards...
2002 New Media Biennial in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
.
The Legacy Project (2002-continuing)
The Legacy Project is a 15-year art project focused on a major closed United States military base: Marine Corps Air Station El ToroMarine Corps Air Station El Toro
Marine Corps Air Station El Toro was a United States Marine Corps Air Station located near Irvine, California.Before it was decommissioned in 1999, it was the home of Marine Corps aviation on the West Coast. Designated as a Master Jet Station, its four runways could handle the largest aircraft...
in Orange County, California
Orange County, California
Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...
. As of September 2007, the six photographers – Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, and Clayton Spada – had made more than 90,000 photographs, according to reports published by arts writer Liz Goldner. For 50 years, the 4,700-acre El Toro base was at the heart of Marine Corps air operations, playing pivotal roles in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War. In an extensive essay, art critic and curator Mark Johnstone, equates the ambitious scope and scale of the Legacy Project to other major photographic surveys, specifically the geographic surveys of the American West in the 1800s, the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration
Farm Security Administration
Initially created as the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty...
(1935–1942), and the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
Surveys (1976–1981). Legacy Project work has been shown in many exhibitions, including Laguna Art Museum
Laguna Art Museum
The Laguna Art Museum is a museum located in Laguna Beach, California on Pacific Coast Highway.An exhibition titled ...
, Chapman University
Chapman University
Chapman University is a private, non-profit university located in Orange, California affiliated with the Christian Church . Known for its blend of liberal arts and professional programs, Chapman University encompasses seven schools and colleges: Lawrence and Kristina Dodge College of Film and Media...
, Art Center College of Design
Art Center College of Design
Art Center College of Design is a private college located in Pasadena, California, and was cited by BusinessWeek as one of the 60 best design schools in the world. The college’s industrial design program is consistently ranked number one by both DesignIntelligence and U.S...
, Cypress College
Cypress College
Cypress College is a community college located in Cypress, California. Opened on September 12, 1966 , the southern California college offers a variety of general education , transfer courses , and 141 vocational programs leading to Associate's degrees and certificates.-Overview:Cypress College's...
, Orange Coast College
Orange Coast College
Orange Coast College is a community college in Orange County, California. It was founded in 1947, with its first classes opening in the fall of 1948. It provides two-year associate of art and science degrees, certificates of achievement, and lower-division classes transferable to other colleges...
, and the City of Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
Angels Gate Cultural Center.
Dream Street (2003-2009)
McCulloh won the right to name a street in Southern CaliforniaSouthern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
at a charity auction
Auction
An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...
. He then spent hundreds of hours at the place he named “Dream Street,” producing 12,891 photos, 47½ hours of recordings, three bankers’ boxes of notes, maps and e-mails” and ultimately a book. The 134-home, 40-acre subdivision
Subdivision
Subdivision may refer to:* Country subdivision** Subdivision , a term for an urban or suburban area, especially if recently parceled up into smaller plots for new uses** Census geographic units of Canada , a term used in Canada...
is a microcosm
Microcosm: Model / experimental ecosystem
Microcosms are artificial, simplified ecosystems that are used to simulate and predict the behaviour of natural ecosystems under controlled conditions. Open or closed microcosms provide an experimental area for ecologists to study natural ecological processes. Microcosm studies can be very useful...
of the new economy, a site where issues of race and gender, immigration and exploitation, hopes and dreams animate a classic California landscape. Susan Brenneman, writing in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, called Dream Street “a classic tale, recast for Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
: the American dream
American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...
, tied to the almighty dollar and abundant cheap labor, dependent, equally, on self-deception and inextinguishable hope.” “For those of us who live on one of California’s streets of dreams,” writes author D.J. Waldie
D. J. Waldie
-Life:D. J. Waldie lives in Lakewood, California, in the house his parents bought in 1946. He was born in 1948.In the mid-1970s, he taught at California State University Long Beach in the Department of Comparative Literature and the University Honors Program....
“the history of how this one was made is of enormous importance as a warning and a guide.”
60,000 Photographs in Hollywood (2003-continuing)
McCulloh was given a commission to document Hollywood in 60,000 photographs by the City of Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
“L.A. Neighborhoods Project.” “The result,” states photographer and writer Aline Smithson, “is a massive and multi-layered artistic inquiry. Map-driven and infused with data and first-hand narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
, the project moves beyond traditions of the isolated photographic image. Instead the project emphasizes complexity, multiplicity, extreme volume, and the interplay of image, data, map, and text.” McCulloh’s Hollywood work has been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe and has become part of the permanent photo archive
Archive
An archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...
of the City of Los Angeles.
The Great Picture (2006)
The Great Picture is the largest photograph ever made as a single seamless image, produced on July 8, 2006 using a Southern CaliforniaSouthern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
jet hangar transformed into a giant camera. The 3,505.75 square-foot (325.44 m²) photograph was made to mark the end of 165 years of film/chemistry-based photography and the start of the age of digital photography. It was made by The Legacy Group; (Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, and Clayton Spada). Dimensions of the photograph are 31 feet, 7 inches (9.62 meters) high x 111 feet (33.83 meters) wide. Aspect ratio
Aspect ratio (image)
The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of the width of the image to its height, expressed as two numbers separated by a colon. That is, for an x:y aspect ratio, no matter how big or small the image is, if the width is divided into x units of equal length and the height is measured using this...
is 3.47:1. The photograph is of the control tower and runways at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station El Toro
Marine Corps Air Station El Toro
Marine Corps Air Station El Toro was a United States Marine Corps Air Station located near Irvine, California.Before it was decommissioned in 1999, it was the home of Marine Corps aviation on the West Coast. Designated as a Master Jet Station, its four runways could handle the largest aircraft...
, Orange County, California
Orange County, California
Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...
. The exposure was 35 minutes long and development took 5 hours, 70 people and 1,800 gallons (6,814 liters) of black-and-white
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
chemistry. The Great Picture has been written about in more than 500 publications, states art writer Liz Goldner, including Art in America
Art in America
Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...
, Photographie, AfterImage, Juxtapoz, Black and White Magazine, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, and Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
.
Sight Unseen (2009-continuing)
McCulloh is curator of Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists for the UCR/California Museum of Photography. Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
art critic Christopher Knight stated that the “87 works by 11 artists and one collective” are “more akin to Conceptual art than to traditional camera-work.” Artists included in Sight Unseen are Ralph Baker, Evgen Bavčar, Henry Butler
Henry Butler
Henry Butler is an American jazz pianist.He is known for his technique and his ability to play in many styles of music. Referred to by Dr...
, Pete Eckert, Bruce Hall, Annie Hesse, Rosita McKenzie, Gerardo Nigenda, Michael Richard
Michael Richard
Michael Richard was a professional rock musician and amateur photographer. In 2002, surgery to remove a malignant tumor behind his right eye left him legally blind, and he began taking abstract photos of urban scenes...
, Seeing With Photography Collective, Kurt Weston, and Alice Wingwall. Sight Unseen was shown at UCR/California Museum of Photography from May 2 to August 29, 2009, and has since traveled to the Kennedy Center for the Arts
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
; Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
; and Flacon, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. The exhibition is the first major museum exhibition of blind photographers, states Stacy Davies in ArtSlant. Writing for Time Magazine
Time (magazine)
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, Matt Kettman quotes McCulloh on the conceptual underpinning of the work: “The whole trajectory of modern art for the last 100 years has been toward the concept of art as mental construction, and blind photography comes from that place. They’re creating that image in their head first — really elaborate, fully realized visions — and then bringing some version of that vision into the world for the rest of us to see.”
External links
- Douglas McCulloh’s Official Website
- Douglas McCulloh’s Photo Quotations Website
- The Legacy Project’s Official Website
- Los Angeles Public Library Virtual Gallery of Chance Encounters: The L.A. Project
- Los Angeles Times Review of Chance Encounters: The L.A. Project by art critic William Wilson
- Southeast Museum of Photography Exhibition of On the Beach: Chance Portraits from Two Shores
- Wired Article on The Great Picture
- Art Center College of Design Exhibition of World’s Largest Photograph
- KCET Blog Entry on Dream Street by D.J. Waldie
- FourStory Review of Dream Street by critic Rebecca Schoenkopf
- UCR/California Museum of Photography Exhibition of Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists
- Time Photo Gallery of Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists
- BBC News Video on Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists