World’s Largest Photograph and Camera

The Great Picture—the world’s largest photograph—held its premier showing September 6 to 29, 2007 at Art Center College of Design, South Campus Wind Tunnel, Pasadena, California.

The Great Picture was created over the nine months leading up to July 2006 by six well-known photographic artists (Jerry Burchfield, March Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, Clayton Spada) collectively known as The Legacy Project, aided by 400 volunteers, artists, and experts. Working in their jet-hangar-transformed-into-camera, the group hand-applied 80 liters of gelatin silver halide emulsion to a seamless 3,375-square-foot canvas substrate custom-made in Germany. Development was done in a custom Olympic pool-sized developing tray using ten high volume submersible pumps and 1,800 gallons of black and white chemistry. The premier exhibition at Art Center College of Design, South Campus, will feature The Great Picture along with videos and photographs in an environment designed to re-create the dramatic atmosphere within the jet-hangar-as-camera where the giant photograph was made.


The Great Picture has been featured in hundreds of publications from art journals such as Art in America, Photographie, AfterImage, Juxtapoz, and Black & White Magazine to newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Der Spiegel and The Guardian. A hardcover book on the project, now in production, will be released in 2008. In addition, the Guinness Book of Records pre-approved and is now evaluating applications in two categories: world’s largest photograph and camera.

The photograph shows the control tower, structures and runways at the heart of the shuttered 4,700-acre Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in Southern California, shut down in the base closings of the mid-1990s. Once home to U.S. Marine Corps air operations for the western United States and Pacific region (including Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East), El Toro is now being turned into housing and one of the largest urban parks in the western United States.

Guinness Certifies New Photographic Records

In official certificates issued July, 2007 in London, Guinness states: “The largest camera was created from an airplane hanger measuring 13.71 x 48.76 x 24.38 m (45 x 160 x 80 ft). The camera produced a photograph on canvas measuring 9.62 x 33.83 m (31ft 7in x 111ft). The attempt was organized by The Legacy Project at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California, USA in June 2006.”

In addition to acknowledging the photograph as a remarkable object, the six artists view The Great Picture as an exclamation point at the end of the film-based era, a marker at the crossing where photography moves away from film and into pixels.


Source: The Great Picture - The Legacy Project Press Release