{"id":98987,"date":"2014-12-02T08:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=98987"},"modified":"2014-12-03T10:55:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T15:55:39","slug":"chem-101-exhibit-at-benton-focuses-on-science-of-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2014\/12\/chem-101-exhibit-at-benton-focuses-on-science-of-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018CHEM 101\u2019 Exhibit at Benton Focuses on Science of Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Detail<\/a>
Detail from Dings & Shadows, color photograms, 2013 by Ellen Carey.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Photography developed from a series of collaborative efforts in early 19th<\/sup> century among scientists and artists alike, from varied disciplines, each exploring chemicals and their reaction to light. Capturing images of landscapes and people quickly became the focus of most images, but as the photographers who emerged explored ways to be more creative with their images, they began to find ways to manipulate the chemistry of the photographic process in order to make an artistic statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cCHEM 101: The Science of Photography\u201d currently on display at the William Benton Museum of Art, serves both as an exhibition of the art of photography while seeking to inspire a better understanding of its basic chemistry.<\/p>\n

The exhibit is collaborative effort between Department of Chemistry and the Benton, developed by Challa Vijaya Kumar, professor of chemistry, and Nancy Stula, executive director of the museum. It is the first in a planned series of projects supported by a National Science Foundation grant awarded to Kumar.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt occurred to me one day that we have museums on this campus and they\u2019re a wonderful gateway to communicate with the community,\u201d says Kumar. \u201cI want to engage with the general public in the larger context with how chemistry affects their lives directly or indirectly. Nancy knows how science and art are interrelated. Artists use cutting edge technology in their endeavors. It\u2019s an excellent marriage between the two disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCHEM 101\u201d includes works by 13 photographers who utilize the chemistry of the photographic process to manipulate images by adding or eliminating colors or changing the time of exposing photographic paper to chemicals.<\/p>\n

\"Binh<\/a>
Binh Dahn, ‘Found Portrait #195’, 2005<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In some cases, chemicals in nature are used, as in two works by Binh Danh, who imposes portrait images on a Nasturtium leaf by manipulating the chlorophyll of the leaf. John Cyr\u2019s photos are of developer trays used by noted photo pioneers, including Ansel Adams, with each showing a different appearance based on the types of chemicals used in them. Barbara Jaffee\u2019s portrait of a woman examining a South African grasshopper appears to be a photo negative, but is a color print \u2013 a chromogenic color print on Fuji crystal color paper — produced from black-and-white film made to look like a negative.<\/p>\n

The works of Ellen Carey in the exhibition were created using one of the few surviving large-format Polaroid cameras, the instant camera that developed pictures as you watched the photo appear before your eyes. Carey\u2019s finished images are like abstract paintings and because of ongoing exposure to light her Polaroid works continue to change over the years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe wonderful aspect of photography is change; that pictures can and do many things. Color fades over time,\u201d says Carey, a photographer and associate professor of art at Hartford Art School who participated in The Salon discussion at the Benton last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn\u00a0under explored\u00a0aspect of this is found in the\u00a0chemistry, especially in my work, which is seen in the Polaroid positive and its\u00a0negative;\u00a0I\u00a0exhibit both. Change is existential, part of nature and in all parts of life,\u00a0I\u00a0see the images in my work reflect this as well as the medium of photography itself, to be a container to hold images dear, to record and document our\u00a0histories, our culture, our time and of course, our visual imagination and creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Astrachan \u201987 (SFA), chief executive officer of the scientific animation firm XVIVO<\/a>, also participated in The Salon discussion and says that the work his firm creates for pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms and teaching materials is inspired by the foundations of the art he studied, much like the works on exhibit at the Benton.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I\u2019m a commercial artist I\u2019ve always wrestled with the difference between art for art\u2019s sake and art in service of something else,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re doing teaching materials, but all along it\u2019s grounded in strong technique. My background is in fine arts and classical painting; I learned about techniques used by realist painters. We stand on the backs of these great geniuses and use their research material to inform our art. We work with scientists and show them what they\u2019re trying to draw because they can\u2019t quite see it. It verifies their thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kumar, who is also an amateur watercolorist with his paintings on display in his Chemistry office, says photography has contributed greatly to science, describing it as \u201can essential tool\u201d for scientists in the quest for discovery and a better understanding of the world.<\/p>\n

Early on, a British botanist named Anna Atkins, helped to document plant species and accidental exposure of the photographic film led to the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Rontgen who went on to winning the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. Now the camera is being used extensively from imaging the smallest entities in advanced materials to the detection of exoplanets circling distant stars in our galaxy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the old days we used photographic film in our instruments and now we have digital imagery,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the digital world, you have physical processes taking place instead of chemistry and these physical processes are reversible. In the chemical world the photochemistry is irreversible and leads to some degree of permanency but photos do fade due to the ongoing chemistry there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carey says the introduction of digital imaging has changed photography similar to the way video changed filmmaking. Both introduced new technology but they are not quite the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe timeline in the mechanical arts, or art in the age of mechanical reproduction are: photography, film, video and digital, spanning over 175 years.\u201d she says. \u201cAsk a filmmaker to work in video and they would think you didn’t understand film; its history or the medium’s capabilities or materials. Digital is different, it is not light sensitive to materials, and does not use chemistry. It has other characteristics, can be globally uploaded online and sent around the information highway, but it is not photography as video is not film. The images may appear similar, they are, but the expressions and\u00a0materials\u00a0are different, and how the images gets made is radically different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCHEM 101: The Science of Photography\u201d continues at the Benton Museum through Dec. 14. For more information go to the Benton website: benton.uconn.edu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photography is \u201ca marriage between two disciplines,\u201d said chemist Challa Vijaya Kumar, whose NSF grant supports the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":98986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-98987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 21:31:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98987"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98993,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98987\/revisions\/98993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/98986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98987"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=98987"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=98987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}