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Ancient photographic
technique rediscovered at Myall Park Botanic Garden
September 2008
Victoria
Cooper and Doug Spowart were recently back at the Garden
to continue an art project for their PhD research. This
found them working both during the day and at night to
capture resources for their artists’ book productions.
Additionally as part of this work they collaborated on the
construction of a Camera Obscura (1). They converted
Avochie’s bathroom to capture an image of the outside
forming within the room.
Below are two
images of the Avochie bathroom Camera Obscura - the first is
the original with the outside image appearing upside down.
The second photograph has been rotated 180 degrees.
They
also worked together on special flash techniques that
highlight selected trees and other garden features at night.
This was a productive three days, which is now keeping them
busy with ideas for new artists’ books.
There
will be an exhibition of this work in March 2009 at the
Mildura Arts Centre and it will be up for display into early
April including the Palimpsest event for 2009. The essence
of this exhibition is to connect the two regions of the
Murray Darling Basin.
Victoria
and Doug wish to thank Myall Park Botanic Garden for their support of this
visual research.
1. A camera
obscura is essentially a darkened room where outside
light is admitted only through a small aperture. This
light forms an image of the outside landscape onto the
walls of the darkened room. From inside the room you can
observe the outside by its projection on the walls.
There is only one problem, due to the laws of physics
and nature, the image is upside down and back to front.
More about Vicky and Doug
http://www.home.aone.net.au/greatdivide
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