Christer Hamp

Christer HAMP is a Swedish artist born in 1945 and living in Sweden. He makes art photographs with a camera of his own creation where all pieces, including the film holder, are made of cardboard. In 1995 he has a Solo Show in Lise Cormery Gallery Art & Communication, Paris, where Christer Hamp takes as well portraits of art collectors. Christer Hamp writes, “Although my camera is made entirely of cardboard, a carboard box with a big lens of a kind that was never intended to be a camera lens at all, it is quite as versatile as many professional cameras. It is a large format camera for 24 x 30 cm (9 1/2 x 12 in.), using sheet film in holders that load one image at a time. Exposure is about five seconds, so the person portrayed must relax and sit still, and it is hard to maintain a fixed expression. This primitive camera often gives a fairly good impression of the portrait of the person in front of the box. The pictures in this series were taken with the camera to the right. With this camera, a very bad one, actually, I can isolate the subject, I can stress what I want to show and remove all the ugly little details that spoil my beautiful town, Stockholm or the portraits I create. It really works best with portraits, bringing out the character of the person by not showing that much detail. Everything on the camera is manual and exposure time is controlled by a slower or more rapid movement of the hand." “Every picture I take asks for a moment of thought in this age of increasing hurry." Solo Shows 1995, Galerie Lise Cormery & Galerie Art et Communication, Paris. 1992-1993Galeria Lawrence-Esucomex, Santiago de Chile, Centro Cultural, Castro, Chile. He shows his inventions and works of art in Galerie Lise Cormery, Paris, France, in Chile and in Sweden, in art galleries and Dalarnas Museum, Palun, Sweden.