Blog Category: de Young

The Chinese artist Shi Guorui produced this photograph of the Donner Pass by creating a pinhole camera obscura. The photographic method is just like the oatmeal container pinhole camera you might have made in grade school, but on a much larger scale. The artist put a single small hole in the side of an otherwise light-sealed semi-trailer truck.  The light rays passed through this small hole forming an inverted image on a long, curved sheet of sensitized photographic paper.  We were told that the artist meditated during the hours-long exposure time.

At 4 feet 2 inches x 17 feet 2 inches, Donner Pass is one of the largest photographs in the Museums’ collection. Due to its unique size, installation required much advanced planning to come up with a method of hanging that was not only safe for the photograph, but also met the visions of the artist and curators. As the artist preferred the immediacy of the uncovered photograph placed directly on the wall, a tailored system of hinging materials and frame installation methods was devised by the paper conservation laboratory to safely meet this vision.  

After much preparation, the day of installation had arrived.  

What is your background as an artist?

My father's family (in Leone Village, Tutuila Island, US Territory of American Samoa) were architects, shipbuilders, and tapa (barkcloth) painters, also my grandmother and great grandmother on my mother's side were tapa painters and I used to help them when I was a small boy in Samoa.  As a young man I studied conceptual art at Cal Arts for a couple years but was disenchanted and ended up working in television in Los Angeles for years.  About seven years ago I began painting again while living in Samoa and living on money from a script I wrote.  Since then I'm in love with painting and its my life long work now.