Tondo with Portrait Profile (Photosculpture)

cults3d

Artist: Willy Selke\nPeriod: 1899\nMaterial: Bronzed plaster\nLocation: Albertina (Permanent Loan from Higher Graphic Federal Teaching and Research Institute)\nDimensions: ø approximately 40 cm\nScanned: 2016\nScanner: GOM ATOS III Triple Scan\nSelke_Patent Between 1897 and 1911, Berlin-based photographer and sculptor Willy Selke registered eight patents for replicating three-dimensional forms through sculpture. His method involved transferring the contour line system from cartography to photosculpture. Unlike François Willème's radial profile sections, Selke used a film camera to take parallel sections of one half of a face under various lighting conditions. He took between thirty and fifty exposures before enlarging them on silver bromide cards, cutting them out, and stacking them on top of each other. The gradations were then evened out using modeling material, followed by the application of gelatin solution. According to contemporaries' descriptions, the resulting reliefs were remarkably lifelike.