GALERIE PETER VANN

CHROME CAMERA ART

Heino Heimann

Chrome Camera Art is uniquely in the world. There are only two artists left worldwide, that have the technique and material available that is necessary, to work with the 2.5 x 2.5 x 6 m sized camera. 

The color images are made with one of the most antiquarian of photographic processes: the camera obscura. Literally translated from Latin as “dark room” Heino has created a room-sized camera in which the photographic paper is exposed. The subject is in the adjacent room, separated by a lens. Light falling on the subject is directly focused onto the photographic paper without an interposing film negative. The result is an entirely grainless image.  

His ingenious „chrome camera“ combines the ancient photogram process with the camera obscura and uses Ilfochrome photo papers, whose velvety depth, color brillance, and light sensitivity are unprecedented, to create rich, original images.

The overall sense of these larger-than-life images redefines the photographic illusion. Heino's subjects, composed simply and directly, are described with the thinnest plane of focus, re-creating and exaggerating the way that the human eye perceives and not without a small acknowledgement to Dutch Master painting.

Every image is developed by the artist in his own laboratory, a unique copy and mostly large-sized format.