Camera, action: ADAM museum reveals Hollywood photography of Charles and Ray Eames

World-famous for their furniture, Charles and Ray Eames were also involved in architecture, industrial design and manufacturing - but their photographic work, though vast (750,000 images), is much less well-known.

Eames & Hollywood, the first temporary exhibition at ADAM (Art & Design Atomium Museum) comprises 240 unknown and unpublished photographs taken by Charles Eames over the years on the film sets and locations of Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like it Hot). The highlight of the show is an Eames specialty, the three-screen slide show.

In Brussels for the opening, Eames Demetrios, director of the Eames Office in Los Angeles - which has the mission of communicating, preserving and extending Charles and Ray's work - spoke about his grandparents' work and this unique exhibition.

Why the focus on photography in this exhibition?

The photography was a really important part of Charles and Ray's journey - the way they documented the places where they went, the way they explored with the camera, the way they used the camera to capture things to let them express an idea. It's been a part of their work that people really haven't seen, so when the museum and the curator Alexandra Midal approached us, we were very excited.

What I think is very successful about this installation from my standpoint is that you have the pure Charles and Ray Eames experience. You have the slide show and the soundtrack they intended. At the same time there's an interpretive component that's quite lovely - they printed some of the images and mounted them on these walls that have the feeling of being on the back of a film set. It's quite dramatic and it's actually very simple but as we all know sometimes simple gestures are quite effective and it lets you savour some of the images.

One of the things that Charles said is that he learned more about architecture from watching Billy Wilder on the film set than he did from most architects. So often we look at Charles's work or you hear him and Ray talk and the idea of structure is really important. What they were interested in was the structure that a director or a film crew used to create the light which we see on the screen. And I think that's the feeling you get from both the slide show and the exhibition.

What was special about the Eames technique of the three-screen slide show?

Charles and Ray certainly aren't the only people to have done them but they're kind of unique as an artistic, almost aesthetic product of their work. It's pretty unusual to have this small type screen thing so essential to them and I think what they liked is that they could help you get an idea from a number of different directions all at the same time, to create a kind of unique experience - and it wasn't unique for its own sake. I think they evolved an understanding of the way of bringing images together both spatially, to have like a spatial collage and a collage in time.

One of the things about three-screen slide shows is that they are very hard to put on. You actually need six projectors. It was like the SWAT team coming in to a theatre assembling all those projectors and putting them in the right place. Now we're able to do something very similar in look, through digital projectors, and it's certainly a lot simpler, but these three-screen slide shows were very important - it was also a way to use imagery in a rich way to communicate an idea.

How has your grandparents' work influenced you?

I've been a filmmaker and storyteller for for quite some time. I have an alternative universe, Kcymaerxthaere, and I go around the world installing markers at historic sites. It's another kind of storytelling and it's been a great adventure. I think it's really about this idea of pursuing. It's sometimes a little corny to say 'pursue your passion' because life just isn't quite that simple. I think about it as surrendering to the journey, what you can do on the path that you feel needs to be explored. As Charles said: "When you do something like that you bring your whole self to bear." If you do something for the journey, even if it doesn't succeed, then you have that process and that place you went along.

And there's a significance about the venue for this exhibition, part of the Atomium?

Before I came here I was definitely familiar with the Atomium. Charles and Ray actually did a film that showed at the 1958 Brussels fair for IBM so I was very aware of that fair. I also do a lot of work teaching people about scale, I think that scale is the new geography and not understanding scale is a form of illiteracy, so an iron molecule magnified 165 billion times is pretty appealing to me. It's an amazing building - it's richer the more you go into it. I'm pretty fascinated by it, and I was asking people if they feel that it's a symbol of Brussels and there was a real emotional feeling that it is. It's a very honest building in a way.

Eames & Hollywood, until 4 September at ADAM (Art & Design Atomium Museum), Place de Belgique 1, Brussels. Open every day except Tuesdays, 10.00-18.00.