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Dwight Eschliman: Color of Light, Images from the One Day project.

Congratulations to the photographer, and longtime collaborator, Dwight Eschliman on his new exhibition, Color of Light. The images in Color of Light are taken from Eschliman's One Day project, where he photographs a single point in the sky, every second, throughout a day. (Manual designed and developed the website for One Day which you can visit here.)

Color of Light features 5 images from the One Day project, photographed during one day, a compilation of 86,400 photographs taken of one fixed point in the sky over 24 consecutive hours, each becoming a pixel in a larger composition. The depiction of a single day’s 86,400 seconds both abstracts the day and reinterprets it, offering the viewer a new interpretation of time and space. Eschliman balances a conceptual awareness of time and technical mastery of the medium. The exhibition features 10 additional images capturing time frames from 10 minutes to 2 hours.

Reflecting on the passage of time and how it seems to almost cruelly accelerate as one ages, Eschliman meticulously catalogs and deconstructs time through photographs, breaking it into one-second increments—86,400 of them in a single day, in a single place, repeated in multiple locations.

The exhibition’s title Color of Light calls out the intertwined relationship between light and color, highlighting the way our perception of color changes based upon a variety of factors, including the reflection of light from surfaces and space. Eschliman plays on this idea deliberately varying the seasons and geographic locations of his photographs, shooting in locations such as Norway, Alaska, Lake Tahoe, Arizona, Mill Valley, and San Francisco.

The idea for the One Day project emerged in 2018 from Eschliman’s commercial work on multiple stop-motion projects. “Stop motion depicts the passing of time in an unnatural, artificial way,” he explains. “The slow, staccato rhythm of the stop-motion projects spurred me creatively to look at time more specifically as a subject matter.” The large scale prints reward the viewer with an in-person experience as the cascading squares unfold and immerse.

For more info on the exhibition, visit the Sarah Shepard Gallery website here.

Letterform Archive talk: Color as Character

Last week we filled a room at Letterform Archive for Tom Crabtree’s salon talk, Color as Character.

Surrounded by a chromatic array of artifacts pulled from the Archive’s collection, Tom traced a path from early sources of inspiration to the identities we create today, with color as the main character throughout. Along the way: a rainbow sweater from childhood, fluorescent screen prints from college, and a kaleidoscopic mix of historical influences, including David Hockney, Eduardo Paolozzi, Piet Zwart, Otl Aicher, and Wim Crouwel.

The evening offered a personal look at Tom’s relationship with color, and the role it continues to play in shaping the way we design at Manual.

Thanks to everyone who came out, and to our friends and neighbors at Letterform Archive for hosting, especially Stephen and Angie.