PICASSO RECREATED IN SWEDISH LAB
Faint Image Recovered From Camera Lens
by Hoku Matsui for Science World - April 2010

What do science and scientists want with Pablo Picasso and the artist's old broken camera? What new revelations could a discarded box camera divulge? Even if it is Picasso’s now-famous camera whose cracked lens some believe led to the artist’s discovery of "planar distortion", or more precisely Cubism?

According to its current owner Peter Hallstrom, the answer is "Everything."

Drawing on the most current techniques of spectral microscopy, a fragile photogene has been pulled from the cloudy surface of the cracked lens of Picasso's famous "cubist" camera from the early 1900s. A photogene is a visual image that persists after the source stimulus causing it has ceased to act. Current belief now is that this faint photogene, or, afterimage, survived because it was the last image targeted by the artist with the camera. To everyone’s even greater surprise, assisted by a combination of laser and digital reconstruction, the subject of this last "shoot" is now believed to be that of the equally famous artist Marcel Duchamp climbing a staircase, most likely at a summer home in Cadaqués where both artists were visiting the Pixot family in 1910.

In a letter postmarked from that period, Duchamp wrote: "Picasso is a beast. He is the bull in his drawings. We argued and debated everything from the dating of ancient Greek statues to the definition of art itself. After too much of the local wine, I found my way upstairs late and to bed … I left early the next morning before anyone had risen."

Swedish scientist Åke Neilsen explained that a thin layer of bacteria and fungi coating the lens may have acted as the net to catch the image of Duchamp (note Neilsen's diagram to left). After-images or photogenes are now believed to be purely ‘spectral’ manifestations which are not yet colored, disproving the previous claim that real expanses of space, no matter how tiny, can be colored. This explains why the image is in black and white, and not in color as was first hoped. Photogenes are thought to be caused by the temporary decrease of sensitivity of the receptors on the surface of a lens that has been over-stimulated with age and usage. Picasso was known to be an avid photographer during the first half of the last century.

At the time of the discovery, the camera was on loan to Detroit’s Museum of New Art and was being used to recreate "cubist" like photographs by the noted Norwegian photographer Stig Eklund. "From its age, the lens appeared quite murky. So I attempted to gently clean it, but soon realized that the milkish shapes were on the inner side of the lens. That’s when we called in Doctor Neilsen and his staff at Bergen University."

Because light enters the camera and produces chemical changes in the lens over time, prolonged stimulation by any light source desensitizes portions of the lens. It does not respond as well to this new light input as to earlier exposures when the camera was much newer. This "weakened" area eventually appears as a negative afterimage, a dark milky area that matches the last viewed shape. Depending on usage, the afterimage may remain for 30 seconds or 30 years. This one remarkably remained for a full century.

Such negative photogenes do not transfer from the lens to the actual film. This indicates that they are produced on the lens alone, and not in the silver nitrate of the film where the signals would have been fused or superimposed together with newer snapshots.

Such a phenomenon is caused by the chemical rhodopsin, found in the rods of certain bacteria, some of which were discovered on Picasso’s camera. Rhodopsin, popularly called visual purple, is a light sensitive chemical composed of vitamin A and the protein opsin.

You can use the increased presence of rhodopsin to take "afterimage photographs" of the world even without Picasso’s camera: Cover your eyes to allow them to adapt to the dark. It will take at least 10 minutes to store up enough visual purple to take a "snapshot." When enough time has elapsed, uncover your eyes. Open your eyes and look at a well-lit scene for a split second (just long enough to focus on the scene), then close and cover your eyes again. You should see a detailed picture of the scene in purple and black. After a while, the image will reverse to black and purple. You may take several such "snapshots" after each 10-minute adaptation period.

Now imagine removing your hands from your eyes and seeing in front of you the picture of Marcel Duchamp ascending a flight of stairs. For young Eklund, this was the nearest thing "to finding an angel dancing on the head of a pin."

The final reconstruction of Marcel Duchamp Ascending A Staircase by Stig Eklund, under the supervision of Doctor Åke Neilsen will be on view at the Museum of New Art's exhibition titled PICASSO'S GARDEN.


ON VIEW EXCLUSIVELY AT THE MUSEUM OF NEW ART:

From May 1 to June 7, with a reception May 1 from 6-10pm

7 North Saginaw Street
Pontiac, Michigan