Empires Of Vison: An Introduction To The Camera Obscura (cont.)
time of Leonard da Vinci, the camera obscura concept was used to produce images and plans with a
linear perspective: paintings, maps, theatrical stage setups, architecture and urban design. In 1604,
Johannes Kepler coins the “camera obscura.” The flourishing of Renaissance thought, Enlightenment
idealisms and the ensuing scientific revolution are inextricable from the advent of the camera, which
by the mid-1800s was taking its mass-produced, familiar form.
The ideological legacy of this invention has infused almost every facet of our lives. The earliest camera
obscura experiments granted the viewer an indelible sense of self importance, a privileged position of
power, a means to place himself at the perspectival centre-point of the visible world. While “obscura”
mapping technologies allowed for new ways to survey, oversee, quantify and ultimately claim land – a
service well employed in European colonialism – the camera’s ability to “fix” reality, capture it, also
increased its authoritative dominion through its apparent claims to both proof and truth. Pictures
generated their own value, they functioned as evidence, status symbols and memory aides. By the
19th century, their role in travel, sightseeing and modern spectacle was so well established that vistas
and destination tourist sites were being designed around the camera itself. Large scale camera
obscuras themselves featured prominently in fin-de-siécle world fairs, theme parks and gardens.
While camera obscuras have largely faded from public attention, the philosophical conundrums they
instigated continue to infuse our social, image-driven imagination. What does it mean to “excerpt” a
static instant in time from a moving world? What does this leave out, who does it exclude, what context
or bias? To what degree do images depict reality or produce it? Who do our images serve? While it is
true that photographs help us remember, isn’t it also true that we take them in order to forget – to do the
remembering for us? The history of camera obscuras lets us think of a moment before cameras when
our empires of vision were less ingrained, when sight was only one way to make sense of the world and
our dogmas of objective truth were seen for what they are: myths, stories, negotiations in flux.
Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival