The Great Picture — the world’s largest photograph — will have its premier showing September 6 to 29, 2007 at Art Center College of Design, South Campus Wind Tunnel, Pasadena, California.

In official certificates issued July, 2007 in London, Guinness states: “The largest camera was created from an air plane hanger measuring 13.71 x 48.76 x 24.38 m (45 x 160 x 80 ft). The camera produced a photograph on canvas measuring 9.62 x 33.83 m (31ft 7in x 111ft). The attempt was organized by The Legacy Project at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California, USA in June 2006.”

About the Photograph

The Great Picture was created over the nine months leading up to July 2006 by six well-known photographic artists collectively known as The Legacy Project, aided by 400 volunteers, artists, and experts. Working in their jet-hangar-transformed-into-camera, the group hand-applied 80 litres of gelatin silver halide emulsion to a seamless 3,375-square-foot canvas substrate custom-made in Germany. Development was done in a custom Olympic pool-sized developing tray using ten high volume submersible pumps and 1,800 gallons of black and white chemistry. The premier exhibition at Art Center College of Design, South Campus, will feature The Great Picture along with videos and photographs in an environment designed to re-create the dramatic atmosphere within the jet-hangars-camera where the giant photograph was made.

The Great Picture has been featured in hundreds of publications from art journals such as Art in America, Photographie, AfterImage, Juxtapoz, and Black & White Magazine to newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Der Spiegel and The Guardian. A hardcover book on the project, now in production, will be released in 2008.

The photograph shows the control tower, structures and runways at the heart of the shuttered 4,700-acre Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in Southern California, shut down in the base closings of the mid-1990s. Once home to U.S. Marine Corps air operations for the western United States and Pacific region (including Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East), El Toro is now being turned into housing and one of the largest urban parks in the western United States.

About the Artists

The six creators of the Great Picture have spent five years working at the shuttered 4,700-acre Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in Southern California. Granted extraordinary access to the sprawling military base, the six artists have shaped a project of rare scope and significance. To date, the group has made some 90,000 images, an art-historical document on a scale seldom seen.