Work of Art

Frankfurt Airport, V: April 19, 2001

Created

2001

Artist

Nationality

German

Birth/Death

1960-

Dimensions

82 × 168 inches (208.3 × 426.7 centimeters)

Medium

Gelatin-silver print, Photography, Print

Credit

Purchased with funds from the North Carolina State Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest)

Object Number

2004.5/a-c

Culture

Classification

Photography

Department

Modern

Key Ideas

This is a triptych, or work of art made of three panels. Together the panels form one image of an airport scene.
Vera Lutter uses a room-sized pinhole camera, also called a camera obscura, to create large black-and-white photographs. She builds a new camera for each project so it fits the place she is photographing.
Lutter uses long exposure times to record hours of activity in a single image. She uses the negative as the final photograph, so every print is unique and not digitally edited.

Learn More

Vera Lutter is a contemporary German artist and photographer based in New York City. She uses one of the oldest forms of photography, called a camera obscura. A camera obscura is a dark room or container with a tiny opening that lets light enter. The light creates an upside-down image of the outside scene inside the camera.

Lutter builds a custom pinhole camera, a type of camera obscura, for each photo project. She places light-sensitive photographic paper inside the camera and uses long exposures to create her images. These exposures can last for hours, days, or even months. Instead of creating a traditional photograph, she uses what would usually be the negative as the final image. This creates a one-of-a-kind print that is not enlarged or digitally altered.

Nothing is solid in memory. Our minds only hold on to traces, outlines—and that is what my photographs portray.

Vera Lutter

For Frankfurt Airport, V: April 19, 2001, Lutter turned a shipping container into a room-sized pinhole camera. She placed it on an airport observation deck where people watch airplanes arrive and depart. During several hours of exposure, the photographic paper inside the camera recorded the activity at a jetway. Airplanes, workers, luggage carts, fuel trucks, and other vehicles became part of one large image that shows many moments at the same time.

The finished triptych is made of three photographs displayed together. Each photograph records several hours of activity. Because the photographic paper was exposed to light for so long, moving people and vehicles appear as blurred, ghostlike shapes. Together the three photographs show the airport and the passage of time.

My way of working is very hands-off. I install the apparatus of observation, the camera, and then endure the process of observation and record whatever happens. The work is essentially about the passage of time, not about ideas of representation.

Vera Lutter