"Dead Time: Ben Cauchi'' will showcase 20 works completed by the photographic artist during his fellowship in Dunedin last year.
‘‘I'm really looking forward to the exhibition, because it represents a year's work down there and it will be interesting to see the reaction,'' Mr Cauchi said from Wanganui this week.
‘‘They're all works I produced while I was in Dunedin.''
Cauchi creates his ethereal images using 19th-century photographic techniques, such as the ambrotype and tintype.
The ambrotype process uses guncotton soaked in a syrup of alcohol, ether, bromide and iodide. The mixture is poured over a glass plate and the sticky pane is then dipped in a bath of silver nitrate, loaded into the camera and the picture quickly taken before the plate dries out.
‘‘There's a lot of serendipity involved in this process, which I enjoy. Because they're hand-made, you never quite know how the end result will turn out. Everything is done inside the camera. Every photograph is a one-off. It's unique, '' Cauchi said.
Cauchi uses equipment such as a 100-year-old solid wood Favorite Rochester Camera, which stands more than a metre high and weighs about 8kg, and an 1860s W.W. Roche stereographic camera, which takes two pictures side by side.
Because of the physical limitations of the cameras, Mr Cauchi's work has predominantly comprised self-portrait and still-life images taken inside his studio.
However, during his fellowship he developed a van that enabled him to explore and photograph outdoor scenes.
Dark Days offers a view of the Dunedin central business district taken from Bell Hill while Eden captures a derelict section and overgrown section in Oamaru. A third outdoor image, Utopia, was taken from the rear window of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship studio and captures terrace flats inhabited by Otago University students.
Mr Cauchi's work resides in public and private collections throughout Australia and New Zealand, including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the National Gallery of Australia and the Dunedin, Auckland, Christchurch and New South Wales art galleries.
A 16-page catalogue, Dead Time: Ben Cauchi, will be released in conjunction with the exhibition. The catalogue includes an essay, Temporality and the Slow Art of Ben Cauchi, by Hocken Library curator of pictorial collections Natalie Poland.
Mr Cauchi returned to Dunedin this week to install the works and attend the exhibition opening.
‘‘Dead Time: Ben Cauchi'' opens in the Hocken Library tomorrow and runs until April 26.
