Takashi Arai’s has a solo show entitled “Exposed in a Hundred Suns” opening this Saturday, May 11th at Amagasaki Cultural Center in Hyogo prefecture, Japan.

Since 2010 Takashi has been working with Daigo Fukuryumaru Exhibition Hall to create new works include a multiple daguerreotypes of Lucky Dragon 5 and a portrait of Matashichi Oishi. Matashichi is a former fisherman of the wooden fishing boat Lucky Dragon 5, and he is a nuclear victim and a survivor from fatal irradiation from Bikini H-bomb test.
For the upcoming show, Takashi will exhibit the series of Lucky Dragon 5, portraits and landscapes from Fukushima, 100 plates from Daily Daguerreotype Project and one brand-new plate from Trinity Site in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Also Takashi’s public lecture will be given on May 11, at 13:30 in a lecture hall on 8th floor in Amagasaki Cultural Center.

Jerry Spagnoli recently spent time teaching workshops in Australia, Craig Tuffin sent us this account with images from his iphone of the proceedings:

“It was a very exciting time in the weeks leading up to Jerry Spagnoli’s visit to Australia. Jerry had been the very first person approached by Ellie Young from GoldStreet studios in Victoria to run two three-day workshops and act as the keynote speaker at Australia’s very first ‘Alternative Photographic Process Symposium’. Ellie has a very passionate group of people regularly attending her workshops and numerous other photographic events, but this was the first time daguerreotypy had been on offer. Photographers ranging from the purely amateur to the seasoned professional rushed to fill the limited places that were available. As a result, both of Jerry’s workshops were filled weeks before his arrival.

It was soon discovered that Jerry is not only a very humble and approachable guy, but also an entertaining speaker, all too willing to share his vast knowledge of this beautiful process. Personally, after many years of working with wet plate collodion, I was awestruck by what the daguerreotype had to offer. Not only could I travel away from my mobile darkroom with this process (not limited by a rapidly drying plate), but the daguerreotypes themselves were everything I had hoped for…perfect!

Jerry made sure everyone in the workshops received his personal attention. Each participant went home with many successful plates and a working knowledge of the Becquerel process. Eventually we allowed him to travel back to New York, but only after he agreed to return ‘Down Under’ in 2014. Phone-calls from people desperate to book places immediately started pouring in, filling next years workshops almost to capacity. I think we can safely say that Jerry’s visit was a huge success and CDags.org can look for a few extra Aussie faces amongst their membership in the coming months and years.”

A recent plate from Daniel Carrillo has been add to his artist gallery page, accompanying it is this video with his thoughts on the process.

Christopher Brenton West has 4 daguerreotypes on show at the Photo Art Fair in London which is on from May 2nd to the 6th.

Scenes from the ImageObject symposium. The day got off to a great start with a wider perspective given on contemporary photographic art practice by Lyle Rexer. It generated some lively discussion in the Q&A session afterwards, making it a perfect way to start the symposium. Jillian Offenbeck from the Archive of Modern Conflict (one of the event’s sponsors) gave us an interesting insight into the collecting of contemporary daguerreotypes by Amc, something close to the heart of the event. Takashi Arai gave us a fascinating and personal insight into his daily daguerreotype project and how it was influenced by the tsunami and the following reactor meltdown in Japan. I gave an account of my daguerreotypy of Maori culture in New Zealand, and spoke about my mobile darkroom facility. Breaking new ground for the ears of contemporary daguerreotypists in the room was Mike Robinson with his revelatory talk on the “Colours of the Daguerreotype”. The content of the talk is part of Mike’s ongoing research for his PhD dissertation entitled “The Techniques and Material Aesthetics of the Daguerreotype”. Once published it will be of great assistance to all those making daguerreotypes and we look very much forward to it.
Our aim with the IO event is to help expand the genre – to have more people making more daguerreotypes. We hope by holding this annual event we can further what cdags does online, and we are already looking forward to next year: IO-2.

Scenes from the opening night of ImageObject, exhibition space on the third floor , food and drinks on the 4th floor in the North Light Gallery.

With the exhibit installed, the next step on the calendar was to have the jurors visit and judge the prize awards in person. Lyle Rexer came at a different time to the other two jurors (Chris Mahoney and Jerry Spagnoli), but all reached agreement after some lengthy discussion about the works and the genre. Wine generously donated by Daniel Kuczynski to the show was provided to the jurors with a platter of fresh fruit and cheeses to facilitate discussion.

In the first of a series of posts about the ImageObject event, I thought I would give some insight into what went into making it.

In the one and half years since I floated the idea for the event, I have sent and received somewhere in the region of 2000 emails, and in the end we raised just over $4800 to pay for some of the costs of the event.

I arrived in NYC on the evening of 24th of March, and first thing the next morning I started the 6.5 day installation of the show. Images below show the progress over the first two days. My initial plan was to create a dark band of color around the walls to provide a dark reflection for the viewing of the daguerreotypes – the idea being when you look at a plate on one wall you see the dark reflection from the wall behind you. So first thing that morning I was off around the fabric district in NYC to get a long bolt of dark fabric, something I was used to doing back when I lived there and was hunting for case making velvet.

In the gallery space, though, it quickly became apparent that more fabric would be needed to gain a decent amount of reflection. The Center for Alternative Photography uses the space for other exhibits and it wasn’t an option to paint the walls black, then labor with trying to paint them white again. After hanging the initial fabric, I transferred the artworks from the CAP office to the exhibition space.

I had designed the display cabinets in Google SketchUp and had them cut on a CNC machine in North Carolina, then shipped as flat packs to CAP. After putting the first one together I handed over the job to Vishnu, a staff member at CAP, who assembled the rest of them and painted them black. For the internal lighting of the cabinets I used LED strip lights, which I found at Canal Lighting in Chinatown, to make maximum use of the internal space in the cabinets.

All of the installation work was very time-consuming and even by the end of the second day, when I had unpacked all the artworks (that took three hours!), I felt a little overwhelmed as a one-man installation crew. With the sequestering of Erica, a CAP staff member, and with some late nights, the exhibition was installed and ready for the the arrival of the jurors to judge Best in Show (next post).