Mark Mullin: 360° Studio Views by Daniel Smith
Artist Mark Mullin in his Calgary studio / photo Daniel Smith
Calgary photographer Daniel Smith likes to remind people that Marcel Duchamp forbade his maid to clean up the dust in his New York apartment. Lucky for Duchamp—and for Man Ray, who famously photographed Duchamp’s Large Glass laying under a year of collected dust in a 1920 photo called Dust Breeding—she listened and let it sit. Smith wishes he was around at the time. With the 360VR technique that he uses, we could have done our own looking at a sleeping, dust-collecting monument of modern art history, and more besides. It would be just like in Smith’s in-studio portrait of Calgary artist Mark Mullin. (For more on Mullin, see Chris Cran’s appreciation in the summer issue of our magazine.) Smith’s portraits, which you can see via the links below, are seamless 360° high-definition images that can be zoomed into and scrolled across online. If you want to know what paint Mullin uses, just aim the cursor and zoom in to his work table. Or if you want to see the layout and atmosphere of his downtown studio, scroll left or right or up and down. A former art history major, Smith sees potential in this popular panoramic technology for a new dimension in documentary portrait photography that puts the subject in the midst of the space where they live and work. “The idea of photographing artists in their entire surroundings is really interesting to me on so many levels,” he says. “I’m thinking about details such as a dog in the corner, a boiling kettle and curios thumbtacked to the wall that add layers of intrigue and density to this type of portraiture.”
Mark Mullin Interactive Studio Portrait by Daniel Smith (low-res)
Mark Mullin Interactive Studio Portrait by Daniel Smith (high-res)
To see more 360° artist-studio views by Daniel Smith, visit the portraits page on his website.
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