Issue 3583 | Magazine cover date: 21 February 2026

Setting a limit for global warming didn't succeed in galvanising climate action quickly enough 鈥� now we should focus on making the annual average temperature rise clear for all to see, says Bill McGuire

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Aperture

$Janette Kerr PPRWA Hon. RSA, Twenty Solargraphs from the Solargraphic Project 2020-24 Formless 2024-25 (exposure time 18 months) Solargraph on paper Kerr collaborated with communities in Iceland, Greenland, Shetland and Somerset, to record the slow passage of time in different landscapes. The solargraphic process is a form of long-exposure photography. Kerr captures the arc of the Sun, as it moves across the sky from dawn to dusk, on photographic paper sealed in DIY pinhole cameras made from drinks cans. Her approach combines science and art, chemistry and the digital processing of the final image. Slow Time. The Sun rises and falls each day, its gradual trek discreetly recorded by small tin cans whose uninterrupted gaze captures every photon of sunlight travelling across the sky. Solargraphy (from the Latin solar, of the sun, and graphia, writing) is a form of long-exposure photography that captures the Sun moving across the sky. It combines science and art, chemistry and [today] digital elements. Being able to capture an extended period of time in a single frame, far beyond the capacity of the human eye, is incredible enough, but even more amazing is how simple it is. A low-tech process, solargraphy typically uses pinhole cameras made from used drinks cans. Sheets of black-and-white photographic paper can be sealed inside the cans, and then the cameras are fixed outdoors, facing south [in the Northern Hemisphere]. We usually think of photography as an instant process, images captured digitally in a fraction of a second. Solargraphs by Kerr have been recorded over a period of 1?18 months, mapping landscape in slow time. Light waves are captured as they travel through the air, passing through a pinhole in the side of the can and slowly etching an image on photographic paper curved around the inside. The resulting images are shaped by landscape and the Sun?s daily elevation. Actions of the environment ? rain and other elemental detritus, or the can?s unexpected movement ? also leave traces on the final pictures, yet moving objects leave no trace. Solargraphy is a ?printing-out? process: this is where an image forms on photographic paper solely through the action of light, without using chemicals to develop the image. Light provides the energy required for silver halides (salts) in the photographic paper to change to a visible state. When silver halides are exposed to light, free metallic silver atoms are ?liberated?, forming a latent image. Over a prolonged exposure of several months the silver halide particles clump together, increasing in size. The photographic paper slowly becomes coloured, transitioning from yellow to sepia and then pink, even slate grey. (In traditional photography, the latent image would be chemically developed in a darkroom.) For contemporary solargraphy, the image captured on the paper can be scanned and manipulated, using a photo-editing program on a laptop, to form a digital record. A solargraphic project was initiated by Kerr during various residencies, and in collaboration with communities in Iceland, Greenland, Shetland and Somerset. The final images that she produces show the Sun?s progress as an accumulation of arcing and streaking lines, leaving ghostly exposures of landscape seen in slow time, out of phase with human activity. w3w: ///reporters.survived.formless (Coleford, Somerset) 2024?5 Solargraph on paper (exposure time: 18 months) 21 x 30cm COURTESY OF THE ARTIST$

Space

Artists gaze into space in stunning new exhibition

A new show at the Royal West of England Academy brings together a series of works that interweave art and science

Regulars

Features

Space

We鈥檝e glimpsed before the big bang and it鈥檚 not what we expected

The big bang wasn鈥檛 the start of everything, but it has been impossible to see what came before. Now a new kind of cosmology is lifting the veil on the beginning of time

Features

Humans

The untold story of our remarkable hands and how they made us human

Features

Health

Postpartum depression in dads is common 鈥� we can now spot and treat it

Features

Culture

TX DATE:23-02-2026,TX WEEK:8,EMBARGOED UNTIL:17-02-2026 00:00:00,PEOPLE:Hannah Fry,DESCRIPTION:,COPYRIGHT:Curious Films,CREDIT LINE:BBC/Curious Films/Rory Langdon Down

Technology

Hannah Fry: ‘AI can do some superhuman things 鈥� but so can forklifts’

Mathematician Hannah Fry travels to the front lines of AI in her new BBC documentary AI Confidential with Hannah Fry. She talks to Bethan Ackerley about what the technology is doing to us 鈥� for better and for worse

Culture

Life

快猫短视频 recommends The Big Oyster: History on the half shell

Culture

Technology

What to read this week: The Laws of Thought by Tom Griffiths

Culture

Life

Weird and wonderful fungi should be so much more than sci-fi villains

Fungi have become Hollywood鈥檚 go-to bad guys. But as yet another story focuses on Cordyceps, Nick Crumpton says we are missing a chance to broaden our fictional horizons

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