CAMERA OBSCURA Luxembourg
1 Comments Published by Cedric Benetti on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 7/18/2007 01:55:00 PM.
Visiting a photographic exhibition with some photography buffs in the small Luxembourgish mining town of Lamadelaine (called 'Rolleng' in luxembourgish). The exhibition space is called the "room of the hanging" (salle des pendus), in reference to the miners, who hung their stuff up on the devices here, before taking a shower after a hard day's work.
The camera obscura (dark chamber) was an optical device used in drawing, and one of the ancestral threads leading to the invention of photography. In English, today's photographic devices are still known as "cameras".The principle of the camera obscura can be demonstrated with a rudimentary type, just a box (which may be room-size) with a hole in one side, (pinhole camera). Light from only one part of a scene will pass through the hole and strike a specific part of the back wall. The projection is made on paper on which an artist can then copy the image.
The advantage of this technique is that the perspective is right, thus greatly increasing the realism of the image (correct perspective in drawing can also be achieved by looking through a wire mesh and copying the view onto a canvas with a corresponding grid on it). With this simple do-it-yourself apparatus, the image is always upside-down.
By using mirrors, as in the 18th century overhead version illustrated in the Discovery and Origins section, it is also possible to project a right-side-up image. Another more portable type, is a box with an angled mirror projecting onto tracing paper placed on the glass top, the image upright as viewed from the back.
As a pinhole is made smaller, the image gets sharper, but the light-sensitivity decreases. With too small a pinhole the sharpness again becomes worse due to diffraction. Practical camerae obscurae use a lens rather than a pinhole because it allows a larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus.
"There is something special about a pinhole camera. There is a beauty in its simplicity and rawness that technology has not been able to better. There is a timeless quality that can make the most uncomplicated subject seem full of poetry. In each pinhole picture I take I hope to capture the joy and excitement that the early pioneering photographers (Fox Talbot and friends) must have felt when they took and developed photographs for the very first time."
The photographs are presented in barrels, hanging from the ceiling
The photos are themed on the old sites of Luxembourgs steel works, an industry that was and still is capital to the development of our country.
This is what the typical luxembourgish photographer looks like
The exhibition space had an incredible amount of fascinating details I tried to capture with my new favorite camera function; the über-zoom!
video of the place, with some photography talk in genuine luxembourgish!
Labels: and now for something completely different, exhibitions, Luxembourg, photography
bien Cedric, me acorde de este lugar y me parece que tienes una forma original de comunicar lo que ves y lo que entiendes y sientes...
Morris