About Bill Thompson's Work
I began working as a sports writer and sports photographer in the early 1960s, selling my drum set to buy a Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic 1A. Sports reporting supported me through high school.
After going to Rochester Institute of Photography for two years, I turned my back on academia. I bought a one-way ticket and flew to Paris with $300 to do a photo story on Marcel Marceau’s new School of Mime.
In 1978, after living in Paris for several years working as a portrait and fashion photographer, I moved to New York and got a job as a photographic artist in prisons, nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals.
That experience was so overwhelming that I tried to convey it to others. I felt compelled to move beyond the traditional photographic rectangular frame. I wanted to create 360 degree images that would surround the viewer and draw them in.
In an effort to make my flat images into an immersive experienced, I created a 360 degree vertical circle with Polaroids scotch taped together. The two Panoramas, “The Nursing Home” and “Venice” were my earliest efforts.
I began doing multiple image panoramic photographs, beginning in 1979 that were often about 180 degrees but would be shown flat. In the early images I did all the matching of prints in the darkroom myself. Eventually I used the computer to merge the images digitally.
I was always interested in large scale. I wanted the viewer to be engrossed in my images, instead of feeling bigger or superior to them. Such large prints, mostly 10-18 feet long, required an exacting technique. Eventually some images contained as many as 50 individual photographs. When “The Nursing Home” was shown in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, it was 15’ high by 100’ long.
In 1979 I was not aware of anyone else doing such work. But ideas are always “in the air.” As I discovered later, the concept of the viewer being surrounded by a 360 degree was done in the 19th century by landscape painters. Such a diorama is mounted at the Gettysburg Museum.
Read MoreAfter going to Rochester Institute of Photography for two years, I turned my back on academia. I bought a one-way ticket and flew to Paris with $300 to do a photo story on Marcel Marceau’s new School of Mime.
In 1978, after living in Paris for several years working as a portrait and fashion photographer, I moved to New York and got a job as a photographic artist in prisons, nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals.
That experience was so overwhelming that I tried to convey it to others. I felt compelled to move beyond the traditional photographic rectangular frame. I wanted to create 360 degree images that would surround the viewer and draw them in.
In an effort to make my flat images into an immersive experienced, I created a 360 degree vertical circle with Polaroids scotch taped together. The two Panoramas, “The Nursing Home” and “Venice” were my earliest efforts.
I began doing multiple image panoramic photographs, beginning in 1979 that were often about 180 degrees but would be shown flat. In the early images I did all the matching of prints in the darkroom myself. Eventually I used the computer to merge the images digitally.
I was always interested in large scale. I wanted the viewer to be engrossed in my images, instead of feeling bigger or superior to them. Such large prints, mostly 10-18 feet long, required an exacting technique. Eventually some images contained as many as 50 individual photographs. When “The Nursing Home” was shown in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, it was 15’ high by 100’ long.
In 1979 I was not aware of anyone else doing such work. But ideas are always “in the air.” As I discovered later, the concept of the viewer being surrounded by a 360 degree was done in the 19th century by landscape painters. Such a diorama is mounted at the Gettysburg Museum.
