Rollout figure photographs

These photographs are examples of my work with a a couple of strip cameras which I made myself to explore what they call nowadays slit-scan photography. But in reality this technique has its beginnings in the late 1800s and early 1900s in applications such as roll-out photography of Greek antiquities and photo-finish at racetracks. In these examples made with film the image is recorded over time through a narrow slit. In the round image the film rotates behind the slit. The movement of the film while the subject rotates in front of the camera gives us a peripheral view of the figure. One can also pan the camera while the record is made and introduce another temporal element to the final photograph.

biography:

Professor Andrew Davidhazy (ret. RIT) has enjoyed a distinguished career as an educator, photographer, writer, inventor and imaging consultant for more than 50 years. He has served as Chair and Professor of the Imaging and Photographic Technology department at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) since 1988.

Davidhazy came to RIT as a student in 1961. He says the reason for his coming to, and remaining in Rochester, was the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences. “Princeton offered a sports scholarship, and I played soccer at that time, but RIT offered a Photographic Science Program.”

He had heard of MIT’s Dr. Harold (Doc) Edgerton of electronic flash fame, visited his ‘Strobe Alley’ and was impressed by the photographs and the man. “I only spoke with him briefly about some problems I had with making pictures of fast-moving subjects, but I saw the connection between science and photography and it interested me,” Davidhazy says. “Ultimately my brief encounter with ‘Doc’ was probably responsible for my choosing photography…….. and RIT.” He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from RIT in June of 1968; his thesis project explored Streak Photography and Future Display Techniques and laid the groundwork for much of his life’s work, examples of which are shown on this page. He also earned Associate in Applied Science and Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in Photographic Science and Photographic Illustration respectively from RIT as well.

Davidhazy’s work has been featured in hundreds of solo and group exhibitions worldwide, in thousands of books, magazines and other printed works, and he has been actively lecturing and publishing over the course of his entire career.

His activities, accomplishments and accolades are numerous. They include: The 1992 inaugural Kodak Visiting Professor to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia sponsored by the Eastman Kodak Company, a 1988 guest instructor at The Institute for Photography of the University of Götenberg, Sweden in 1986, the recipient of a $43,000 Hasselblad Foundation award to support and improve the scope of instruction in the photo-instrumentation through the purchase of High Speed Video equipment, and in 1986 he received a grant of High Speed Video equipment from the Spin Physics group of Eastman Kodak