June 3rd through 25th -
Artists reception June 3rd, 6pm to 10pm

-ABOUT THE SHOW

Lewis' black and white photographs are silver emulsion contact prints made from 28" X 30" and 30" X 30" paper negatives. The extra large format cameras which produce the negatives are handmade in plywood and fitted with 19" and 21" glass lenses. They will be on display in the gallery with the photographs. The images on display include studio portraits of the artists' friends and uncommon Seattle landscapes made in the spring of 2000.
As an added feature on opening night, Lewis will have on display a camper trailer that, with the help of Blaine England of Whidby Island, he has converted into a giant mobile instant camera. From this device, which he has named the "Campera Obscura", he produces 16" X 20" contact prints from paper negatives and lithographic negatives. Lewis considers the camper an "instant camera" because the negatives, once exposed are developed on the spot inside the light tight camper.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Richard Lewis is the founder of FotoCircle Gallery, 1994, and continues to be an active member of the Seattle Art Community. He is currently organizing a "Second Thursday" lecture series through the gallery. Lewis has appeared in Fine Impressions Gallery, Seattle, 1991; Eye Gallery, San Francisco, 1990 and the Tacoma Art Museum, 1986.

THE CAMERAS

Two mammoth format cameras were used for this show. The first - called the Cameron - is a portrait camera, with a 30 x 30 inch format. It is only used in the studio. The Cameron is made of plywood, is partially painted purple, and is equipped with a built-in amber safelight. It has an opening side hatch for viewing the image, which appears upside and backwards on the inside of the camera, opposite the lens. A dark cloth is used to keep extraneous light from entering the camera body at this time. With the studio darkened, the film can be loaded one sheet at a time through this hatch. Before the exposure, the hatch is closed, the lens cap placed over the lens, and then the studio lights are turned on. The subject must remain as still as possible for the 20 second exposure. The exposure is made by removing the lens cap. The second camera, called the Madaraflex - after Jim Madara who was commissioned to build it - employs a flat field,19 inch process camera lens, and features a roll-back film advancing system. It is a 50 pound landscape camera, loaded with a 24 inch by 100 foot roll of film, which can be advanced frame by frame in the field. The lens is fixed focused on infinity. Though it is a wide angled lens, sharp focus starts at 70 feet from the camera and extends to infinity. In other words, in the center of the image circle everything from 70 feet to infinity will be in focus, and anything closer will not be tack sharp. Because of the peculiarities of the flat field lens (as opposed to the more common "pictorial" lenses of commercial cameras), stopping down the aperture does not appreciably increase depth of field or focus of the image. The most prominent feature of the Madaraflex is its through-the-keyhole perspective. The Madaraflex throws an uncropped circular image into the 24 x 30 inch camera back when focused at infinity. This created interesting challenges pictorially: the circular format demands a compositional wholeness in landscapes based on filling a round space rather than a more linear and right angled horizon-based geometry. Wide angled landscapes dominated by big skies or vast foregrounds simply don't work in the circular format. The Madaraflex fits into the back of a stationwagon for transport, and is most easily, but not necessarily, carried by two people. Both cameras are modifications on earlier designs using lenses wall mounted in a darkened garage, or in a light-tight camper trailer. This 16 x 20 inch formatted "Campera Obscura", developed by myself and Blaine England, was a key prototype in the evolution of the cameras I'm currently using.

THE NEGATIVES

The negatives are 24 x 30 inch or 30 x 30 inch images exposed onto commercialblack and white mural paper. These paper negatives have a few peculiar qualities. Most significantly the emulsion speed is very slow, about ASA4. This compares with ASA 100 to 400 for more conventional film. The slow speed generally makes for long exposures. Secondly, the paper negatives are not sensitive to the entire visible light spectrum like films available today. The emulsion is orthochromatic, as opposed to panchromatic, thus it "sees" primarily blue light and is not sensitive to red/orange objects (which appear unusually light in the print). These qualities - the slow film speed and the panchromatic light sensitivity - are identical to those of emulsions used in the pioneering days of photography in the 19th century. The process tends to create images with a stillness and big feeling (slow emulsion), and an unusual tonal palette with cloudless skies and apparently contrasty landscapes (panchromatic). The negatives, once exposed, are processed in paper developer, fixed and washed, then hung to dry.

THE PRINTS

All of the images in the exhibition are contacted printed. In other words, the mammoth negatives are registered one to one with an unexposed sheet of black and white photographic mural paper, pressed together under glass, and exposed under a high intensity light. The prints are "straight" interpretations of the negatives; no tonal manipulation is done during the exposure. The photographic paper used is commercially available - Ilford Multigrade RC and Luminos fiber based papers - and is processed conventionally for longevity and richness. The photographs are available in limited editions of three prints per image.