Hans-Christian Schink, 1/05/2010, 5:46pm-6.46pm, S06 26.486′ E039 27.776′

Hans-Christian Schink photographs the sun, exposing the film in his 5×4 camera for exactly one hour. The sun arcs across the sky in a black streak that appears like a comet or missile. Schink is taking advantage of the phenomenon of solarization, where extreme amounts of light exposure on film can result in dark rather than light tones. He has found a film/developer combination that captures both the solarization and the details of the landscape, so the sun appears as a strange intruder into placid scenes of nature.

He photographed at locations around the world, making a sort of travelogue of the sun’s relation to the planet. It’s a menacing dark force tearing the sky, a graphic streak in the landscape, and a paradox. Your eyes can never witness it but you believe what you see.

His new large format book, 1h, published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, documents the project, and his website also shows the whole series of thirty seven images.