Thomas Paquet Captures Sun's Trajectory with Pinhole Camera at Bigaignon

At Galerie Bigaignon in Paris, Franco-Canadian photographer Thomas Paquet (born 1979) presents "Et pendant ce temps le soleil tourne," a series of unique pinhole camera photographs that trace the sun's daily path. Using a rudimentary optical device—a simple hole through which light enters—Paquet multiplies the apertures, varying their orientation to capture the sun's movement over hours. Each print is one-of-a-kind, impossible to duplicate, as the emulsion records the sun's shifting trajectory. The artist's slow, artisanal process involves hand-manipulating paper and carefully aging chemical solutions. The resulting images feature sequences of imperfect, sinuous lines in browns and oranges, evoking a blurred pictorial horizon. Paquet's work challenges the speed and standardization of contemporary image production, making tangible the passage of time through light's sensory capture. The exhibition runs until July 3, 2021.