Solargraphy – Exposure of Time, Space and Weather
My solargraphy work began with this image, a 128-day exposure made from August 16 to December 21, 2014, using a custom-built pinhole camera overlooking Georgian Bay.
127 Day Solargraph (2014.08.16 – 2014.12.21), Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada
Facing west over Georgian Bay, this 128-day solargraph records one sun trail per day. The highest arc is from mid-August, the lowest the winter solstice.
Part Art – Part Science – Part Chaos
Solargraphy is an alternative photographic process that captures the sun’s path across the sky over days, weeks, and months using a custom-built pinhole camera and light-sensitive black and white photo paper. Each exposure records the sun’s rising and falling arc, gradually shifting with the seasons due to the Earth’s axial tilt and elliptical orbit. Cloud cover causes missing, faint, or broken tracks. The result is a single visual record of time and celestial motion that we cannot otherwise see.
These vivid impressions are shaped by both natural forces and chemical unpredictability. Colour shifts emerge from extreme overexposure, moisture, temperature fluctuations, and even organic intrusion — mould, insects, or water. The chemical makeup of each brand of photo paper introduces further variation, making every solargraph a one-of-a-kind collaboration between light, material, and time.
Unlike conventional analog photographs, solargraphs are not developed in the darkroom. The extreme exposure burns the image directly into the paper, which remains sensitive to light. A high-resolution flatbed scan is made to extract the image, but the scanner’s light gradually destroys it in the process. You get only one chance. The resulting paper negative is inverted, flipped, and processed to reveal ghostly sun trails and the residue of countless days. Each image holds within it everything that happened under the sun.
This was the beginning of an ongoing series exploring time, space and weather.
Archival pigment prints available in limited editions