Gallery: This Photographer Converted a Box Trailer Into a Giant Mobile Camera
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Portrait Mode: Kasnoff’s TrailerCamera has two lenses mounted in its back door: a wide-angle and a telephoto. He switches between them by closing one of the lens caps. To compose a picture, Kasnoff must back the trailer into the exact right position—it’s one of the most time-consuming aspects of the process.
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Picture Frame: An image of Kasnoff's wife, Heidi, is projected onto a 20- by 24-inch sheet of ground glass, which serves as a focusing screen inside the darkened trailer. He moves the wooden stand back and forth to focus the image. Then he slips a sheet of light-sensitive photographic paper into the frame and makes an exposure. The average exposure time for a portrait in daylight is around two seconds.
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Still Life: Heidi sits for her portrait in rural Texas. A set of jack stands under the trailer prevent movement during exposure, just like a tripod would.
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Wash Cycle: Outside the trailer, a photographic negative of the portrait is washed in a water bath after development. The image must then be contact-printed onto another sheet of photographic paper to create the positive image.
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Olden Eye: This lens, a vintage Kodak 24-incher from the 1940s, is the first piece of glass Kasnoff fastened to his original 8-foot trailer. He’s used a total of eight lenses on his three iterations of the TrailerCamera.
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Dark Arts: The forward section of the trailer houses the darkroom. After Kasnoff makes an exposure, he carries the photographic paper a few short steps to process it.
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Dev Ops: First, the paper goes into a tray of liquid developer. Once the image is sufficiently developed, it moves on to a stop bath, which arrests the process. The last tray is filled with fixer, a fluid that makes the photograph permanent.
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Big Shot: Kasnoff made this 40- by 48-inch portrait, titled “Hong” (2016), using six sheets of photographic paper exposed together, processed separately, and then assembled to form a single image.
