Description
Beautifully conceived and produced, this oversize volume (a horizontal format: 14.75x9.75") documents an extraordinary project to produce the world's largest photograph, using the world's largest camera, a pinhole camera made from an airplane hangar. The resulting photo is roughly 107 feet wide and 31 feet high, created when the camera projected the image of the decommissioned air station El Toro (in Orange County, California) onto paper on a wall, with the emulsion then applied by hand. This Great Picture is just one component of a larger project called the Legacy Project, made up of a group of six world-class photographers, which has been undertaken to thoroughly document El Toro's transformation from an air base into a park. The history of the base, and the process, people, technique, and theory behind the project and the photo it produced are described in multiple chapters. An essay is included by renowned art critic Lucy Lippard. The execution of the volume itself is unusually fine and carefully conceived, with the type of some headings set upside down to mimic the reversed image of the camera obscura, a "pinhole" through the front cover, and a wealth of color photos of the project as well as concluding, fold-out plates of the finished photo in its positive and negative forms. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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- The Great Picture is a history-making gelatin silver photograph three stories high by eleven stories wide- The image was made using a shuttered southern California F-18 jet hanger transformed into an enormous camera obscura—the largest camera ever madeSix accomplished photographers—Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, and Clayton Spada—known as The Legacy Project, aided by 400 artists, experts, and volunteers, transformed an abandoned southern California F-18 jet hangar, located atthe Marine Corps Air Station El Toro (MCAS El Toro) in Orange County, into the largest camera ever made and then proceeded to produce the world’s largest photograph, The Great Picture. The image is an enormous panoramic landscape of the California desert beyond the air station, which isdestined to become the heart of the Orange County Great Park.On July 12, 2006, The Legacy Project unveiled the world's largest photograph at a special reception held inside the world's largest camera. It has been exhibited only twice since then during a short viewing at Art Center College of Design, South Campus Wind Tunnel, Pasadena, California in 2007,and most recently this past winter at Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China. However, for the first time, Sweeney Art Gallery/Culver Center’s presentation of The Great Picture will be accompanied by additional components that explore details behind its making and those who made itpossible.The Legacy Project has shown their work in more than 30 exhibitions in the United States and abroad. The Legacy Project will continue to work through 2017 as El Toro is transformed into the Orange County Great Park.
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