“[…] Every solstice, Robert comes to Miraval to pick up his pinhole cameras and install new ones. The solargraphs he produces continue to amaze me year after year. Each time, I am stunned to see in one image a place so rich in history and the luminous trace of our journey around the sun. Today I am delighted that Miraval inspires such a beautiful book. This book represents for me a unique tribute to this estate, the cosmos and our friendship.”
—Brad Pitt, from the foreword
"It may be impossible to picture the infinite reach of the universe, but it’s easy to see that mankind is nothing more than a speck of life in the cosmos. How do we reconcile our small presence with such mind-bending concepts as time and space? The American photographer Robert Charles Mann has heroically approached the task with his own art. Over several years, the observations recorded by his signature pinhole cameras at Chateau Miraval, in France, have unveiled wonder. Fifty images that capture the transient movement within time and light are the focus of Mann’s newest book, Solargraphs." —Maggie Turner, Air Mail
"His solargraphs are not images of time passing: they are images of time remaining. One hundred and eighty-two arcs of the sun stacked in a single frame, six months of rain and light condensed onto a piece of silver paper sealed inside a whisky can.”—Guénola Pellen, Blind
"In the sun-drenched heart of Provence, where time stretches out like vineyards across rolling hills, a remarkable creative collaboration has unfolded between Hollywood icon Brad Pitt and the enigmatic American photographer Robert Charles Mann. The result is Solargraphs at Château Miraval—a mesmerising new book that captures not just the landscape of Pitt’s storied estate, but the invisible sweep of the cosmos itself, all through the deceptively humble lens of a pinhole camera. [...] In an age where photography is often instant and disposable, Solargraphs [...] is a radiant counterpoint—an ode to slowness, intention, and the art of seeing beyond the visible. It is a tribute to a place, to a process, and most movingly, to a friendship built on light." —Viscount Yves de Contades, IX Magazine
"Robert Charles Mann is ducking under a 3 meter long, 400 year old oak beam in his Loire Valley studio. Suspended from the vaulted ceiling by a system of pulleys inherited from his father, it is a massive musical instrument he’s just pulled down to demonstrate to me how it is played. Mann’s compositions on the Longwire were notably woven throughout the score of the film Ad Astra, and the instrument features in the opening credits and the climactic confrontation on Neptune. When he’s not composing music, the multi-hyphenate creative can often be found scaled up a ladder or in a tree, installing one of his pinhole cameras to capture the sun’s path.
In the artist’s studio, surrounded by the hum of the Longwire and the enduring imprint of his legendary collaborations, Mann and I discuss an artistic practice defined by constant experimentation and the profound creative power of letting go." —Paige Miller, FAD
“Through a serendipitous line of who knows who, based on Mann’s work as a master printer, Mann wound up connected with the actor Brad Pitt. Mann did some work helping Pitt organize and print a decade’s worth of Pitt’s photographs, and in the course of their conversations over the years, Pitt’s involvement with Chateau Miraval became important. The idea was born that Mann would install pinhole cameras at Miraval, leave them open for some time, to see what happens. Six months is roughly 180 days. One hundred and eighty arcs of the sun across the sky, each one held in a single frame. What you get in that single image is perhaps not the passing of time, but the presence of time. It’s a humbling idea.” —W. Scott Olsen, FRAMES
“[Robert’s] images are rooted in place yet evoke something existential. […] Solargraphs documents moments in time from a place that holds deep meaning […] Friendship and nature are as intertwined with his work as his own two hands, which built and installed each camera.” —Hayley Donigan, Deep Travel
“50 of Mann’s mysterious, dreamlike works from Château Miraval are collected together in his new book Solargraphs. A solargraph is a photographic image created with pinhole cameras using long exposures that capture the sun’s movement across the sky […] The old school cameras and slow, patient process goes against the current trend for high tech digital cameras and instant gratification.” —Graeme Green, Amateur Photographer
