How To Camera Obscura Work
Purpose of this lesson:
The camera obscura is an integral part to understanding how modernistic day photography adult and how some artists worked. Nevertheless, it's a pretty confusing concept if y'all've never really looked into the mechanics of how one works or experienced one yourself. This lesson is meant to explain the ins and outs of how the camera obscura functions as well as its place in history. Nosotros will look at how it adult out of scientific circles into the fine art world and how artists, both by and nowadays, accept used it.
This lesson is geared towards secondary or loftier school level students. It would all-time fit into a foundations course for either studio classes, particularly those focusing on photography, or an art history grade looking at either photography or art particularly from holland in the 17th century.
Allow'due south get started…
1) Definitions to remember
- Photographic camera Obscura: a darkened enclosure having an aperture commonly provided with a lens through which light from external objects enters to form an paradigm of the objects on the opposite surface. (Merriam-Webster)
- Daguerreotype:
- An early photo produced on a silver or a silver-covered copper plate.
- The process of producing such photographs. (Merriam-Webster)
2) To get students intrigued
Show students this short video created by National Geographic:
Seeing a photographic camera obscura be constructed in a room helps you to understand that the projection of what you lot're looking at actually does go flipped. It's something that seems unreal, unless you're a physicist, isn't information technology?
Ask students questions nearly the video and camera obscuras to get them thinking. Questions could include the following:
- Did you look the image to actually be flipped? Why or why not?
- Why practice you lot think the image is flipped?
- Have y'all e'er worked with a camera obscura? If so, what did you discover virtually interesting?
- How could yous use a camera obscura in fine art?
- Practice you know whatever artists, past or contemporary, that piece of work with a camera obscura?
Role 3) The Lesson
Office I: The mechanics of the Camera Obscura
Before we dive too far into the history and uses of the camera obscura, it'due south adept to know how, exactly, i works. Camera obscura is Latin for 'nighttime chamber,' which is critical in making one of your own.
In its almost bones form, all you need is a room fully closed off to light, essentially a darkroom for photography, with one pocket-size transparent pigsty in 1 wall. On the other side of the wall with the pinhole, you have to have a lot of lite. If you get it merely right, whatever is on the brilliant side of the wall with the pinhole will project through the pigsty, upside downward, onto the inside of the darkroom.
Camera obscuras can come in all shapes and sizes. They can physically exist the size of a room, you can make well-nigh any room into one, as you've seen in the National Geographic video. Or, what's more common, is having a smaller box camera obscura that can exist transported effectually with a clear panel at the reverse end of the box equally the pinhole. In other cases, they're as small as a cereal box; these are the kind you might acquaintance with using when watching a solar eclipse every bit not to impairment your optics.
To right the image, and so that it isn't upside down, a mirror can be added to the photographic camera obscura. At the opposite stop of the pinhole. You will usually notice this blazon of camera obscura in the smaller box size ones. The mirror is placed at a 45º angle so when the light passes through the pinhole it hits the mirror, inverting the image it carries. The image then projects onto the roof, if you volition, of the box. For this type of camera obscura, there is a transparent portion on the superlative, which allows you to see the image projected through the box.
Part II: The history of the photographic camera obscura
The camera obscura is built-in of the pinhole camera, whose beingness tin can exist traced back to 400 BC when Mo-ti, the founder of Mohism, theorized about the concept of a pinhole camera. Before long later on, Aristotle put pinhole cameras to practice using a crude version of one during a partial solar eclipse. Over the centuries to come up, pinhole cameras were tinkered with my philosophers and scientists alike, in various parts of the earth. They were also predominately used for scientific purposes in relation to viewing the sun. Leonardo da Vinci detailed his version of a pinhole camera in his 1485 Codex atlanticus but it wouldn't be until 1604 that the term 'camera obscura' was used in relation to the marvel.
Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer, mathematician, and astronomer, is often credited with having coined the term and in 1685, Johann Zahn drew diagrams of the camera obscura in his O culus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium. The camera obscura became pop among artists, particularly for Dutch artists. Then, in 1827, Joseph Nicephore Niepce used a photographic camera obscura and a bitumen-coated metal plate to actually capture the prototype projected by the apparatus. Finer, Niepce fabricated the first rudimentary photo, which was dubbed the Heliograph, thus changing the form of history, in terms of technology.
The Heliograph and use of the camera obscura evolved until Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre improved Niepce's invention to create the Daguerreotype. The use of the camera obscura peaked in the late 1800s and as the decades went on, tweaks and new technologies meant that mod twenty-four hour period cameras were developed and the Daguerreotype, similar the Heliograph and camera obscura, brutal out of fashion simply to be used by artists and photography enthusiasts.
The Daguerreotype, which is what comes to mind when yous remember of photos from the early 1900s, would evolve into the modernistic camera, as we know it today. While it is still used in some circles of artists and photographers, Daguerreotypes, like the Heliograph and camera obscura, are relatively disused today.
Role Iii: The camera obscura and artists who have embraced information technology
Fifty-fifty before the camera obscura gave birth to photography, it had its own identify in the art earth. For some artists, the full glory of the camera obscura is nowadays, creating scenic images. In other cases, scholars and enthusiasts, alike, accept speculated, debated, and gone back and forth as to if the photographic camera obscura had any begetting on an artist'due south works.
Cuban-built-in artist Abelardo Morell is one such artist whose use of the camera obscura fully shows the dazzler of what a camera obscura tin can do, merely peradventure in a fashion that you wouldn't except. When he start began working with a camera obscura in 1991, Morell started making rooms in his home into rudimentary cameras, much like the i shown in the National Geographic video we watched earlier. To sharpen the images they produced, he toyed effectually with lenses making the outside world reflect onto the interior of the rooms in his house.
Once he was familiar with creating an at-habitation camera obscura, Morell tackled the kind of long-exposure photography necessary to capture the image he wanted. Since then, Morell has continued working with camera obscura images transposed over relatively ordinary living spaces. Almost as if a room has replaced the silver screen for a flick projector, Morell's works enter into the 'territory of dreams,' to use his ain expression. Over the years, his projects using camera obscuras have taken him around the world juxtaposing the intimate and public parts of life in one scene.
Canaletto, the eighteenth century Venetian painter, on the other manus, is someone whose use of a photographic camera obscura has been speculated over the years. His precise drawings led many to believe that the creative person utilized the camera obscura to create his works and eventually, it became generally accustomed that this was how Canaletto worked. Yet, in 2017, all-encompassing infrared testing proved that Canaletto in fact did not use a camera obscura to reach his drawings. Instead, the testing showed that he relied on his own pencil underdrawings, thus putting to rest the theories of using a camera obscura.
Finally, in that location is ane case written report that however baffles some while others are steadfast in their conventionalities: Vermeer. The 17th century Dutch Old Master has created some of the earth's near loved, photo-realistic paintings, nonetheless, very little is known about him. Sometimes called the 'Master of Light,' Vermeer left no drawings or messages later his decease and nosotros nevertheless don't know who he studied with, leaving lots of unanswered questions about his career. Vermeer'due south works take stunned artists and fine art historians, akin, for their use of light and their stunningly life-like appearance. These intricacies and the impressive nature of his works take led many to believe that he worked from a camera obscura.
Those who are of the belief that he created his masterpieces with a camera obscura point out that many of his paintings have a like setting, they are small in size, and the soft focus that can be establish within the paintings reflect the focus you achieve with a camera obscura. A 2014 documentary called Tim'south Vermeer, produced by Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller fame, chronicles ane inventor and Vermeer lover's journey to recreating a painting past Vermeer. The documentary cites a number of reasons why Tim Jenison believes Vermeer may have worked from a photographic camera obscura and in the end, he makes a painting that is very similar in look to Vermeer'south The Music Lesson.
Of course, there are those that merely don't buy what Tim's Vermeer is selling and strongly stand behind Vermeer having created his works without the aid of a photographic camera. Those in this house of thinking see Vermeer's works every bit the product of his own genius. Their reasoning is that to have created the paintings with a camera, he would have had to pigment with colour in a dark space, something that would have been near impossible, and that in a number of Vermeer's paintings, there is a pinhole at the location of the vanishing point showing where Vermeer used a pin and chalk lines to create linear perspective. Thus, a camera obscura would non accept been necessary to create his scenes.
**Above is a prune from Tim'due south Vermeer showing a form of a camera obscura that Tim Jenison created to learn to paint.**
While there is no real definitive proof that Vermeer did or did non use a camera obscura, information technology seems that he at least drew inspiration from them. In Vermeer: Master of Light, a 2001 documentary, you tin can meet how the soft focus of the photographic camera obscura is mimicked in Vermeer's works. The king of beasts head finial constitute on a chair that makes a recurring appearance in his paintings, makes for a bully case in betoken. Through the camera, the highlights and shadows are very obscure, much like those painted by Vermeer giving an even more realistic issue.
Part IV: Theconclusion
Though it is uncertain how much of a part the camera obscura played in Vermeer'due south works, we practise know that the apparatus was highly influential to artists, scientists, and everyday people, alike. The photographic camera played a large role in the development of the modern-day camera and also shed light onto the physics of light.
Think of how different today would be without the camera as nosotros know information technology – it'south impacted engineering, our lives, and how we portray our lives (think of Instagram and Tik Tok without the evolution of the camera!) in diverse ways.
Without the camera obscura'southward rudimentary beginnings, things might expect a little different, today.
iv) Wrap Up/Activity:
To wrap upwards this lesson, no thing if you're working with a studio or art history class, make a camera obscura. Whether it is making your classroom into a large camera obscura or making one in a cereal sized box, as though to look at an eclipse. This helps students to fully understand how the camera obscura works and the images it produces. If you have them (or if a science or physics teacher has them and you're able to borrow them), toy around with dissimilar lenses at the pinhole to see how those bear upon the paradigm produced.
With a studio class, have them create a project using a photographic camera obscura. This could exist done with any medium y'all decide for your students, or, you could give your class free reign over which medium they'd similar to apply. As further research, perchance have them look into artists that have used a camera obscura, or have them do studies that show how a camera obscura was used in the procedure of making their artwork if information technology is non obvious with the finished product. It would exist up to your discretion if taking photographs with a modern camera would exist permissible.
For an art history class, piece of work with students to delve deeper into an aspect of the camera obscura. You could accept them enquiry how artists have used the camera obscura, the fence over if Vermeer (or some other Old Master) used the camera obscura, or the touch the camera obscura has had on a particular part of fine art history. Likewise, you lot could have students analyze a painting by an creative person who used a camera obscura and discuss the similarities and differences when compared to a painting that was definitely not painted using one. The photographic camera obscura allows for a lot of flexibility in assignment here.
Resources
Abelardo Morell and the magic of the camera obscura
Camera Obscura
The Camera Obscura
The Photographic camera Obscura, The National Gallery of Fine art
The Camera Obscura in History
How to Spot a Daguerreotype (1840s-1850s)
Room with a view camera obscura by Abelardo Morell
Secrets of Canaletto's Drawings Revealed Ahead of New Exhibition
Tim'southward Vermeer, 2013 documentary
Vermeer and the Camera Obscura
Vermeer: Chief of Low-cal, 2001 documentary
For more Art Critique Fine art Lessons…
A Lesson in Restitution: diving in to expropriated art, Globe State of war II, and beyond
A Lesson in Street Fine art: how a movement morphed out of graffiti and into the art world, Office I, Part Two, and Part Three
Art Lesson: The history of Art Deco
Source: https://www.art-critique.com/en/2020/03/a-lesson-on-the-camera-obscura/
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