As in other photographic series, I always remain with my camera in the same place and lie in wait with my camera, so to speak, and wait for a scene to arise. This time it was the view from the window of my studio during certain periods of time. The main protagonist was the sun.

 36 Days - The sun outside  of my window

With a 35 mm camera 36 pictures were taken in 36 days with the respective exposure time of 24 hours with open aperture. Later, in 2019, I photographed the 36 days again with the medium format camera and continued.

In 36 Days Calendar, these shots are arranged in a grid and form a calendar of the light of these 36 days.The images capture exactly this period of time. In the landscape, the "sun's path" with its changing position, intensity and quality of light is depicted daily. In those images taken on very clear days, a stronger "burn-in" into the substrate is visible than on cloudy ones.

In our perception, the path of the sun also changes daily. In the work 36 Days of Reference, the view is reversed. By superimposing the light paths of the sun, quasi as a reference point, a shift of the landscape is created and thus an actual visualization of the course of time in space or, "our journey on the planet around the fixed star sun" during these 36 days in space.

Eight weeks

...Basically, Michael Michlmayr's works are about the relationship between time and space. Often another component comes into play, natural or artificial light. In the project Die Sonne vor meinem Fenster (The Sun outside my window), he photographed the landscape outside his window for 24 hours at a time over a period of 36 days using extreme long exposure, and mapped the "sun's path" with its changing position, intensity and quality of light during this time. While the photographer -or the camera always remained in the same location in the studio, the outside world was constantly in motion. In the photo 36 Days Reference #1, which shows the superimposition of the sunlight trajectories, a compression of the passage of time of these 36 days takes place. In calendar #1 a time calendar of these 36 days becomes visible...

from a text by Petra Noll-Hammerstiel

Voyages

During my journeys I always put the camera at a certain place to capture 12 hours of the sun line on b/w film. For examples Hotel rooms, balconies or at the lakeside or the beach.