The Great Picture

The World's Largest Photo and The World's Largest Camera


By Annie Rivera

The world's largest photograph was unveiled by the Legacy Project at the former Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, CA July 12. Four of the six-member team, are photography professors and artists at Cypress College.

The Legacy Project artists include Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Rob Johnson, Clayton Spada from Cypress College, and colleagues Jacques Garnier of San Clemente and Douglas McCulloh of Riverside.

To make the Great Picture they went back to the origins of photography and made what is called a camera obscura and used a six millimeter pinhole-sized opening rather than a lens. The group spent two months darkening an abandoned airplane hangar to create the world's largest camera. "We chose a particular airplane hangar not because of its size but because of the view of the control tower, the runways, the coastal hills in the background which signified the history of the base and would be the center of the Orange County Great Park," said Burchfield. "Once we picked that building, its size determined the size of the picture."

It was clear to the group that "no one has ever done this before," said Burchfield. This creative and artistic idea from its inception was also very expensive and they and their volunteers logged in hundreds of hours of meticulous hard work.

To make the picture, they had to custom order unbleached Muslin, a special woven seamless cotton fabric from Germany because "there was no fabric of the type and size we needed in the U.S.," Burchfield said. The Muslin material spanned at 32 feet tall and 111 feet wide. To make the fabric light sensitive "Liquid Light," a liquid emulsion costing $8,000 was used. The liquid had to be kept heated in order for it to lose its gel form.

The exposure of the photograph took 35 minutes after which the developing began. A total of 70 people were involved in developing of the photograph. John Halligan, a photography student and lab assistant, was one of 70 people involved in the washing and developing of the photograph. "Hanger #115, the interior was 45 feet high, 160 feet wide and 80 feet deep," Halligan said. It took 1,800 gallons of black and white chemistry.

After spraying the muslin canvas with chemistry, they used sixty 55-gallon drums to dispose of the chemistry. Fire hoses were used to wash the material. Since there was no power in the building and the risk of "powering it up" posed a fire hazard, generators were used. "To develop it took about five hours. The actual time it spent in the developer was five minutes," Burchfield said. The finished photograph weighed-in at over 1,200 pounds and totaled $65,000 in costs.

Burchfield is a photography professor at Cypress College and began taking his students to the El Toro Marine Corps base in April 2002. "I wanted to give them a real life experience and an opportunity to photograph a place that had historical significance," said Burchfield. It became a difficult process to get clearance as there was an ongoing battle over the property and its future. Johnson, Chamberlain and Spada would later join him on his outings. The photography class was divided into groups. Each professor would take a group and explore and photograph the Marine base.

They later invited McCulloh and Garnier to join them and they plan to continue to photograph there until the Orange County Great Park is created. "Collectively we have taken around 80,000 photos in four years," Burchfield said.

"We documented every single structure and every single open space. We went into every single room of every one of the 1,800 structures on base."

They have documentation of the perimeter of the base and made a video which "combines 3,080 sequential still images which showing the view of the base from the outside looking in," said Burchfield. They plan to return in 2015 to re-document the perimeter of the base. In addition, Global Positioning System readings were taken to determine their position. Once the structures are torn down they will have a frame of reference for when they return in 2015.

The concept for the Great Picture was suggested by Spada after teaching in China during the summer of 2005. Spada's students collectively came up with a project to make a big pinhole camera and take it out in the field to make one-of-a-kind photographs of Chinese tourist sites. They created a camera big enough to take photographs that were 13 feet by 22 feet. When Spada returned, the six members of the Legacy Project agreed this was a great idea.

Plans for a public viewing and a reception for the Great Picture are forthcoming in May 2007 but the picture remains in storage until then. A book deal is also in the works and will be released later.

According to Burchfield, this record setting project qualifies for two categories in the Guinness Book of World Records: the world's largest photograph and the world's largest camera.

For more information please call the Photography Department at Cypress College at (714) 484-7000.

Original post: 09/19/06

Media: Cypress Chronicle and CyChron.com