Solarigraphy

Solarigraphy is a concept and a photographic practice based on the observation of the sun path in the sky (different in each place on the Earth) and its effect on the landscape, captured by a specific procedure that combines pinhole photography and digital processing.

[1][2] Invented around 2000, solarigraphy (also known as solargraphy) uses photographic paper without chemical processing, a pinhole camera and a scanner to create images that catch the daily journey of the sun along the sky with very long exposure times, from several hours to several years.

[7] Previous experiments with long exposures on photosensitive papers and with registration of the sun arcs in the sky were done at the end of the 1990s in Poland by the students Paweł Kula, Przemek Jesionek, Marek Noniewicz and Konrad Smołenski and in the 1980s by Dominique Stroobant, respectively.

This work, which mixes together art and science, is based on the active participation through the Internet of people interested in the apparent movement of the Sun, that is photographed with artisan pinhole cameras loaded with photosensitive material and subjected to very long exposures of time.

[9] Solarigraphs are images that show real elements that cannot be seen with the naked eye, they represent the apparent trajectories of the sun in the sky due to the rotation of the Earth on its axis.