2024 Best in Solargraph – Yongxin Zheng

solargraph: a day in the backyard

Medium

Photography

Abstract

A solargraph, encapsulates a captivating narrative through a cameraless long-exposure photography technique, offering a visual chronicle of the sun’s trajectory across the sky. My pinhole camera was placed in the backyard, replicating the perspective of an individual reclining on the lawn, capturing the sun’s passage to symbolize the inexorable flow of time. The palette evokes a sense of nostalgia for a pre-internet era when time unfolded at a leisurely pace and people savored moments of idleness with more awareness at the present moment.

The showcased artwork, a solargraph, encapsulates a captivating narrative through a cameraless long-exposure photography technique, offering a visual chronicle of the sun’s trajectory across the sky. Constructed with basic camera components, the solargraph, made by an apparatus called solarcan, relies on a fundamental camera design: a shutter regulating light entry, light-sensitive media for image capture, and a darkroom ensuring the preservation of media sensitivity and the ultimate image integrity. The solarcan, materializes by housing light-sensitive paper within a soda can equipped with a minuscule aperture, which functions as a substitute shutter when covered with black tape.Since my project was done in the north hemisphere, in order to capture most of the sun movement, the hole on my pinhole camera is facing south to align with the sun’s movement within the tropics. With longer exposure time, the band showing the movement of the sun gets wider as the sun moves between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.

In my project, my image was obtained by scanning the light sensitive paper after the 4-day exposure and using minimal photoshop to enhense the tonal distribution. The pinhole camera was set in the backyard, replicating the perspective of an individual reclining on the lawn, capturing the sun’s passage to symbolize the inexorable flow of time. The green, blue and yellow tone evokes a sense of nostalgia for a pre-internet era when time unfolded at a leisurely pace and people savored moments of idleness with more awareness at the present moment. In essence, this solargraph serves as a visual metaphor, encapsulating the transient nature of time and the serene beauty found in moments of quiet contemplation.