A Camera as Big as a New York Apartment

By Heather Murphy

Imagine looking at a 24-foot photograph of your face, created with such detail that if you got up on a ladder with a magnifying glass you could inspect the angles at which your eyebrow hairs were growing. This is what photographer Dennis Manarchy wants to create. Manarchy is bucking the trend towards tiny, discrete digital cameras and Photoshopped perfection by creating a camera the size of a New York apartment.

A Larger Than Life Autumn and Dewey

Photographer Dennis Manarchy believes in the power of huge portraits. In order to make photos this big in crisp detail, he is developing a 35-foot long version of a traditional film camera. Autumn (left) and Dewey were photographed using an early prototype of the device.

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Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.
Blanc, Atchafalaya Swamp Basin, Louisiana

The negatives, measuring 6 feet by 4.5 feet, have 1,000 times greater detail than an average digital photograph, he explains. Blanc, pictured here, was photographed with another massive test device, created by turning a fish house into a camera. (If you know what you are doing, you could potentially turn any room into a camera).
Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.
The Test Camera

This is the prototype Manarchy is currently working with. It was constructed through extensive trial and error. He makes exactly one photo of each subject. "Two days of preparation results in 1/1000th of a second flash exposure and I have only one chance to get it right. I literally focus half-way down an eyelash. If the subject moves, it's out of focus...if they blink, it's a disaster," he explains.
Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.
The Dream Camera

This is an illustration of the 35-foot film camera he wants to build and transport across the country. The goal is to create 24-foot photographs, which will be presented in a touring exhibit.
Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.
Test Subject Pieced Together

Manarchy has spent many years trying to figure out how to make photos the size he is after. At first he could not find film that was large enough and he had to piece together 4.5x6 foot sheets, hence the squares you see here.
Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.
Todd Osborn in Strips

Osborn, an arts teacher on Chicago's south side, was another early test subject. Manarchy used strips of film to capture the image since he couldn’t find a big enough sheet for his purposes.

Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.
Another Test Subject

Manarchy calls his project "Vanishing Cultures" but has a somewhat flexible definition of what this encompasses. Although he is interested in groups that are literally on the verge of extinction – like Holocaust survivors, certain Native American tribes, and remote rural communities – he is also interested in “people of character” with unusual lives.
Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.
Molly

Manarchy has been making portraits for many decades and has an implicit sense of the types of faces that make for good pictures. He says that after studying thousands of portraits – both photographs and paintings – over the years, he’s realized the great importance of eyes. He takes great pains with lighting and timing to make sure people's pupils are just as he wants them.

Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.
Dr. Bob, Psychologist, Chicago

It is hard to appreciate what is different about Manarchy’s photos looking at them in a small online slide show. It’s when they are printed out huge – bigger than life – on the wall that they have a surreal quality.

Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.
Virgil Poole Jr., Former WWII Tuskegee Airman

Poole belongs to the group of airmen portrayed in the recent movie Red Tails. Photographed with Manarchy's massive camera, Poole's face is presented in such crisp detail that if someone chose to look at the photo with a magnifying glass, he could see the angle of his beard hairs. (We know this because another test subject with a beard reported back to Manarchy that he did just that.)

Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.
William J. Cullerton, WWII "Ace"

Being photographed at such scale, with such a powerful camera, requires one to be utterly at peace with one's face, Manarchy explains. There will be no Photoshopping or color correction. What you see is what you get, except bigger. Much bigger.

Related: A Camera as Big as a New York Apartment
Courtesy Dennis Manarchy.

The camera extends 35 feet in length—big enough for the photographer and his assistant to throw a tea party inside it.

This massive dream camera has not yet been completed—Manarchy is still raising money on Kickstarter, but in the meantime he has been playing with this far less mobile prototype:

This camera requires 4.5 x 6 feet negatives, which are viewed using an actual window as a lightbox. Developing them requires taking a shower in chemicals. But now that Manarchy has finally found film large enough for his purposes, he’s enjoying himself. (As you can see in the gallery above; for a while, he had to piece sheets together).

“Last night, we were down in the dark room, processing these huge sheets,” Manarchy tells me on the phone. “I’m entirely covered in chemicals, but I’m thinking I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.”

His excitement is evident in his voice throughout our interview. This man who has been making portraits for decades sounds like he’s just discovered a new superpower. And in a way, he has: the power of going very, very big.

“What motivated me was Chuck Close, the painter, whose photo-realistic paintings I almost found more striking than the photos that he was painting, because of the viewing size,” he tells me.

If you blow up a tiny negative that big, the resulting image looks clear and faithful, he says. But then you compare the eyelash in the photograph to an eyelash made with single brush stroke. “It’s like the difference between a paper airplane and a rocket ship and it brings the whole thing to another level.”

Of course, we are accustomed to seeing people blown up big—on the sides of buildings and on billboards. But using film of this magnitude—offering 1,000 times greater detail than the average digital photograph—gives it a different, rather surreal quality, Manarchy says.

big camera chuck close — "Stanley" by Chuck Close at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. (Gabriel Bouys/Getty Images.)

There’s another side to working at this scale (and price), of course. There’s no room for error or for retakes. He makes each person’s portrait exactly once, which requires extreme selectiveness when it comes to choosing subjects.

Who deserves to be photographed in such a way? Manarchy believes members of “vanishing cultures” do. This is the name he has given to the project, and his work with early prototypes has focused on members of groups on the verge of extinction—Holocaust survivors, the Tuskeegee airmen, tiny Native American tribes, remote rural communties. That said, he’s a photographer fascinated by faces, so he’s not opposed to just throwing some “fabulous people of character” in there, essentially because they're cool.

Manarchy hopes to raise enough money through his Kickstarter project to get the dream camera-RV rig built and then take it on the road. Right now, his prototype is not particularly mobile; to take pictures of remote groups, he’s had to build cameras on location. In a swamp in Louisiana, he turned an old fish house into a camera, after spending several days fishing and hanging out with the Cajun community. Surprisingly, perhaps, his slow, on-site method did not prompt any particular skepticism, he says. What would have left them truly alarmed, he believes, is if another photographer had suddenly arrived, snapped 1,000 quick photos and then sped away.