Edition 2019
CLAUDE MARTIN-RAINAUD
CAMERA OBSCURA
In a darkened interior space, the image of the landscape outside may be projected upside down on the walls, ceiling, floor and furniture inside. On these impromptu screens, leaves stir, vehicles and pedestrians go their ways, and birds cross the sky on a background of drifting clouds. For an observer inside, this is a permanent natural cinema, a magical show to be observed very seldom, fortuitously: light must enter this enclosed space through a hole of the right dimensions. The photographer sets up the phenomenon in the chosen place and then watches it at length to witness how the details and characteristics of the image evolve with the movement of the sun illuminating the scene while the shadows slowly migrate. A photograph of this moment is the only possible tangible trace of the visual poetry generated by the phenomenon of the camera obscura, although it is bereft of any movement. We thus return to the sources of the manufacture of images.