Behind the Garage Door

Summary:

In the 1970s Michael Westmoreland invented a spectacular form of giant panoramic image: the aerial-film colour transparency. He employed very rare antique rotational cameras and a special film-stock which was only manufactured once. Nothing like them had ever been made before, and it is highly unlikely for a number of reasons that anyone will ever repeat the experience.

We are talking about rolls of film emerging from the camera with 500 times the information content of a 35mm slide. This was not technology for its own sake but an intention to make visible astonishing subjects which had never been seen before in such a form.

They were viewed at the time in a number of exhibitions at leading locations and received prestigious awards: however, the work is relatively little known because the reproduction technology of that era couldn’t deal with such large originals and this precluded its use in any form of mass media.

In "Behind the Garage Door" Michael Westmoreland takes us into his now-defunct darkroom to demonstrate the processes involved.