Artists Show Innovative Photography Techniques at Photokina

More than 150,000 photography experts, equipment manufacturers, and enthusiasts will  converge in Cologne, Germany from September 18 to 23, for the Photokina 2012: World of Imaging expo.  The biennial event is a leading international showcase for advances in imaging technologies and ideas.

One company that will be making a splash at the show is ILFORD, which makes professional-quality media for both inkjet printing and color photographic processes. In an event entitled “Imaging Without Boundaries,” Ilford is helping seven cutting-edge artists and organizations demonstrate techniques that challenge the boundaries of photography and image-making.

Each participant will have their own exhibit, in which they will show some of the results achieved from their innovative approaches to image capture and output.

“For over 130 years, Ilford has strived to provide photographers with the tools they need to achieve their creative vision,” explains Jane Dixon, Director of Global Marketing at Ilford. “With the Imaging Without Boundaries event at Photokina, we hope to show visitors that these tools continue to develop and that photography today is thriving as an art form.”

Imaging Without Boundaries is a collaboration between Ilford and Susanna Kraus and the IMAGO 1:1, the largest walk-in camera in the world. Imago 1:1 works as a giant photo booth, creating life-size portraits of the models who enter it. Prints from the camera are made with direct exposure onto Ilford media, coated especially for Imago 1:1 at the company’s site in Switzerland. At Photokina, the Imago 1:1 exhibit will showcase work by Imago 1:1 Owner and Art Director Susanna Kraus from Germany and Austrian photo artist Annegret Kohlmayer.

Some of the other visual artists and organizations participating in the “Imaging Without Borders” exhibit are described below.

Heino Heimann will exhibit large-format images made with his room-sized Chrome-Camera and directly exposed onto ILFOCHROME, the world’s only direct positive color material. Heimann built the Chrome-Camera at the Ilford site in Marly, Switzerland, where it will offer international artists and students the opportunity to experience working with direct positive exposure.

Design Academy Berlin will show how objects such as coffee cups or cupboards can be converted into pinhole cameras.  Using pinhole cameras made from everyday objects, a guerilla group of photographers and Design Academy students will explore Cologne taking pictures as they go. The pictures will be exposed onto Ilford direct positive black-and-white media and developed in a darkroom installed at their Photokina stand. The pictures are designed to show Photokina visitors that working with direct exposure in an innovative and playful way can dramatically change their perception of photography.

REALEYES will exhibit extraordinarily realistic 3D images that can be viewed on screen without the use of 3D glasses.  The process starts by creating 3D content that is rendered from 30,000 different viewing angles using a complex image grid made from Ilford photographic film. When transmitted from a screen, the displayed object appears to float as much as one meter in front of the screen, giving the viewer the perception that the object can actually be touched.

Michalis Papamichael will present a selection of imags he created by projecting the negative on very thick self-made paper. In his images, the bright becomes dark and vice versa. By exposing the picture in reverse, the image becomes something entirely new and each print becomes a one-of-a-kind object.

Visitors to photokina can learn more about the techniques featured in Imaging Without Boundaries during a series of seminars hosted by each of event participants.

LINKS

Press Release: Imaging Without Boundaries

Imaging without Boundaries Seminar Schedule

Photokina 2012

Database of New Products at Photokina 2012