Icelandic Poppies

The ‘Icelandic Poppies’ were created in a custom-built camera obscura. This ancient optical method is camera-less photography in its purest form, with no negative involved.

A single flash of light at 1/250th of a second illuminates a poppy bloom, and the image focused through a lens onto the light-sensitive Cibachrome paper.

The results act as a direct and almost physical rendition of the poppy. With a depth of field of 3–4mm these works have the sharpness of ultra large-format photography as well as the feeling of loose painting where the edge of the flowers blur into the background.