Credits

Homepage video by dronevideos.gr – Fotografeion

FotoGrafeion is a team initiated by Stefanos Tsakiris (www.stefanostsakiris.com). It is active in the photography sector and develops its creativity while establishing relevant business partnerships. The starting team in 2017, also included Nikoletta Daniil, Panagiota Hatzipanagiotidou, Alexis Karnoutsos, Tasos Koimtzidis, Tasos Paschalidis and Yiannis Lianopoulos, and along with various external collaborators, they created the Gyanotype project in order to create the world’s largest cyanotype. It was named so after the combination of the words Giant and Cyanotype. Thessaloniki Museum of Photography supported this effort, with the collaboration of the Municipality of Thessaloniki and the team of Chemical Engineers from Aristotle University. Also contributed Polyeco, Petkos Metal, Makedonia Palace, deputy mayors Spyros Pengas and Socrates Doris, and Ioannis Podiotis, Angelos Tsimperis, Stathis Michailidis.

On Monday, September 18, 2017, in the area of Nea Paralia, in front of the hotel Macedonia Palace, in a form of an open event, the audience became acquainted with this specialized photographic printing process and experimented with the FotoGrafeion team on an unprecedented scale. The team treated it as a challenge but also as an opportunity to achieve artistic expression and collaboration at a local level.

A work of art based on a specific technique was created. To achieve this, a large scale fabric of about 280 sq.m. was used. The pattern on the fabric was formed by placing people and objects on it (inspired by Eadweard Muybridge photo poses).

The technical process is as follows: a photosensitive solution is applied on the fabric. After that, it is allowed to dry and becomes photosensitive only to sunlight-UV (preparation stage). Right after it is ready for sun exposure (printing stage). When we unfolded it, immediately we placed some items on it (in our case people lay on the cloth and stayed still) and a few minutes later, a latent image – a blueprint – is created on the fabric. The sun exposure time depends on the weather conditions. On a sunny summer day, like the day of the event, it took approximately 4-5 ′.

The development and “fixing” of the latent image was done by rinsing the fabric with water, and as soon as it dried we got the final result of the cyanotype printing. The fabric was measured by the Topography Engineer Aris Giatas with satellite technique and the final result was 276.64sqm, thus conquering the Guinness World Record.