Light painting

Light painting, or light drawing, is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source while taking a long exposure photograph, either to illuminate a subject or to shine a point of light directly at the camera, or by moving the camera itself during exposure. The technique is used for both scientific and artistic purposes, as well as in commercial photography.

Light painting (also called light drawing) dates back to 1889 when Étienne-Jules Marey and Georges Demeny traced human motion in the first known light painting “Pathological Walk From in Front”. The technique was used in Frank Gilbreth's work with his wife Lillian Moller Gilbreth in 1914, when the pair used small lights and the open shutter of a camera to track the motion of manufacturing and clerical workers. Man Ray, in his 1935 series "Space Writing," was the first known art photographer to use the technique. Photographer Barbara Morgan began making light paintings in 1940.

In 1949 Pablo Picasso was visited by Gjon Mili, a photographer and lighting innovator, who introduced Picasso to his photographs of ice skaters with lights attached to their skates. Immediately Picasso started making images in the air with a small flashlight in a dark room. This series of photos became known as Picasso's "light drawings." Of these photos, the most celebrated and famous is known as "Picasso draws a Centaur" Peter Keetman (1916–2005), who studied photography in Munich from 1935 to 1937, was the 1949 co-founder of FotoForm (together with Otto Steinert, Toni Schneiders et al.), a group with great impact on the new photography in the 50s and 60s in Germany and abroad. He produced a series Schwingungsfigur (oscillating figures) of complex linear meshes, often with moiré effects, using a point-source light on a pendulum.

During the 1970s and 80's Eric Staller used this technology for numerous photo projects that were called "Light Drawings". Light paintings up to 1976 are classified as light drawings. In 1977 Dean Chamberlain gave birth to light painting (using handheld lights to selectively illuminate and/or color parts of the subject or scene) with his image "Polyethylene Bags On Chaise Longue" at The Rochester Institute of Technology. Dean Chamberlain was the first artist to dedicate his entire body of work to the light painting art form. The artist photographer Jacques Pugin made several series of images with the light drawing technique in 1979. Picasso and Mili's images should be regarded as some of the first light drawings. Now, with modern light painting, one uses more frequently choreography and performance to photograph and organize.

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