RL Thermographic Portrait

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Richard Lowenberg

1975

Print

Created w/ Rush Creek Editions, Santa Fe, NM, printed on a Canon Pro 4100. Printed in 2023

Description

This self-portrait by the artist Richard Lowenburg was produced using an infrared video thermography system, imaging equipment more commonly employed by the US military in overseas conflicts such as the Vietnam War. He borrowed one from Aeronutronic, a division of defense contractor Ford Aerospace. The device sensed differentiations in heat and employed algorithms to convert those differences into color images, accurate to half-degree delineations. Instead of the 450–750 nanometer range of the visible light camera, infrared cameras operate in wavelengths as long as 14,000 nanometers. The apparatus scanned images every second by means of a mirror encased in the camera, and it required cooling with liquid nitrogen while it was operating. In this still, Lowenburg’s facial features become almost imperceptible through the process of translation into thermographic vision.