Camera Obscured, 2010
Photographs are the index fossils of historical reality and the history of photography is thus
not only a complex history of interpretations of reality: it is also a history of perception.
- Bernd Stiegler, Photography as the Medium of Reflection
The large-format photographs in Camera Obscured were made by photographing found
camera obscura images, which occur as a result of reflected light entering through windows
and coming to rest on the walls of my studio, apartment, and friends’ homes. The photographs
document the physical presence of the receiving walls and the inexact registration of the
outside world.
With this series I endeavour to depict the phenomenon when natural light begins to unfold
into image. The ambiguity of the ensuing photographs, resulting from close cropping and
unfocused, projected window light, brings the reading away from an initial comprehension
of space and interior/exterior forms and toward the subjective subtleties of seeing – a type
of interior projection in itself. The tension between the wall texture as seen up close (such
as drywall tape, cracks, nails, and thumbtack holes) and the soft focus coloured light from
afar allow the viewer to move between identifiable and imagined spaces. As indistinct
representations of something familiar (light on walls), these images emphasize looking as a
cognitive process unfolding in time.
As with my past work, I have concentrated on the intrinsic characteristics of the photographic
medium in order to explore the ways in which such characteristics shape our perception.
Through the series Camera Obscured I hope to draw attention to these subtle images that
surround us daily - to which we are so often unconscious - as well as begin to raise questions
about expectations of content in photographic imagery.