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Double Run Eight

Chicago Cluster Project at former Hedrich & Blessing Photographers, 400 N. Peoria
March 28 - April 27, 2025

Double Run Eight

Solo exhibition for the Chicago Cluster Project at Epiphany Center for the Arts
September 9 - October 22, 2022

Click to expand for detailed image info


Double Run Eight was made with a “Bell & Howell Filmo Double Run Eight” series camera from the Rod Slemmons Camera Archive. The original 8mm format, known as Regular 8 or Double 8, runs a 16mm gauge film stock through the camera, exposing one half of the frame on the first pass. It is then flipped and again runs through the camera, this time exposing the other half of the frame. The final processed film is traditionally split down the center and spliced together, resulting in a 8mm print.

 

Double Run Eight keeps the un-spliced double 8 format, choreographing formal collisions of the resulting four frames through forwards, backwards, and radial motion as a 16mm print. The exhibition at the Epiphany Center for the Arts showed the original negative as a 16mm projection loop. The negative degraded over time, accumulating scratches and dust throughout the duration of the show and eventually disintegrated. The film exists now as a 16mm print. 

The accompanying photographs were made using a Kodak 16mm Enlarger camera also from the Slemmons Camera Archive. This camera was designed to photograph 16mm frames onto still photographic film. The visual and temporal shift of the moving image to a photographic print serves as a reminder of the fundamental connection between still photography and cinema. The negative-positive inversions are a rudimentary principle of the analogue process, thus the rephotographing sequence can be traced through the “double negative” contact print of a negative image on a black background and the white prints resulting from contact printing of these.

Double Run Eight was installed as a two-channel digital projection installation in 2025 for the second iteration of the Chicago Cluster Project, Don't Take Photographs, Think Them

Double Run Eight 
black and white double-8 film installed as 16mm loop projection
gelatin silver prints 

Double Run Eight

Chicago Cluster Project at former Hedrich & Blessing Photographers, 400 N. Peoria
March 28 - April 27, 2025

The two-channel digital projection installation of Double Run Eight has one of the projections inverted, inviting the viewer to experience the film from both directions. The installation format also mimics the image plane, with two viewers and two projections becoming four quadrants, or four frames.

Digital installation for the second iteration of the Chicago Cluster Project at 400 N Peoria for the show Don't Take Photographs, Think Them. The Peoria building was the former headquarters for Hedrich & Blessing Photographers, a Chicago firm redefining architectural photography innovative spirit to capture the spirit of buildings. Operating from 1929 to 2017, the studio documented many of the defining works of 20th-century architecture while also supporting emerging Chicago photographers by hosting exhibitions in its headquarters as early as 1935. The Hedrich & Blessing Photography archive is now housed at the Chicago History Museum.

Two-channel digital projection of original 16mm print,
gelatin silver prints 

p.2025

© Kioto Aoki.

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