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MEGAN SLATOFF-BURKE

The Legacy of Camera Obscura

In 1038 AD, an Arab scholar named Alhazan described a working model of the camera obscura. Literally meaning dark chamber, the camera obscura was a room or box lit only by a small hole that admitted sunshine. Light rays poured through the hole, eerily assembling an image of the outside world on the opposite wall. (qtd. Camera)

Often, a technologically deterministic argument is easiest to turn to in considering dead media. It is tempting to insist that a now extinct medium was simply inferior to later technologies, and came to be replaced naturally as autonomous new technologies pushed ahead towards a destined progress. However, as I trace the life of a projection device called the camera obscura from its use as an objective drawing tool, to its partial incorporation into modern photography, to its later experimental employment as a sort of live visual entertainment, I will try to show that historical/cultural climates were greatly responsible for assigning values and proper uses to this technology. Context helped dene camera obscuras advantages and disadvantages, and ultimately its life and death. This will be my foundation as I address the extinction of the medium. First off, it is necessary to identify what camera obscura technology could do, by breaking it down into the neutral technical qualities it embodied in its life. The main novelty of the camera obscura was its ability to translate complex three-dimensional environments of light, color, form, texture, and movement into two-dimensional projections, while preserving near perfect, realistic detail. According to The Magic Mirror of Life, a website dedicated to the camera obscura, This magic is explained by a simple law of the physical world. Light travels in a straight line and when some of the rays reected from a bright subject pass through a small hole in thin material they do not scatter but cross and reform as an upside down image on a at surface held parallel to the hole (Wilgus). So, through the projection device, angles,
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proportions, and shades were effectively attened. It should also be noted that the camera obscura made this translation instantly, spitting out two-dimensional images precisely at the speed of light. Another key quality of the camera obscura was the impermanence of its imagery. An image had to exist in three dimensions at the necessary moment in order to be translated into two at all. As distinguished from lm images, the images projected by the camera obscura had to be living. They could not be frozen and made permanent within the machine itself. The scene projected by the camera obscura had to be happening at the given location, at the given moment in order to be viewed. The imagery framed by the camera obscura was transient; it was as ephemeral as the world around us, prone to change, to day and night, clouds passing, sun shifting, and people moving. I would argue that these qualities themselves are almost neutral, until placed in some sort of social or practical context. According to Jonathan Crary, It is crucial to make a distinction between the empirical fact that an image can be produced in this way and the camera obscura as a socially constructed artifact. For the camera obscura was not simply an inert and neutral piece of equipment or a set of technical premises to be tinkered upon and improved over the years (30). I will thus begin to dene two distinct contexts of camera obscuras employment (as contextual and as context-neutral), in hopes of establishing a point from which we can begin to see why certain aspects of the camera obscura came to be thought of as advantages, while others as disadvantages. In one of its major lives, the camera obscura was employed as a drawing tool, by portrait artists such as Vermeer and by artists who drew anatomical representations for scientic purposes. Camera obscuras strength as an aid to drawing resides in its ability to distil onto a at surface the confused visual information which strikes the eye (qtd. Camera). The at picture projected by the camera obscura was easier for an artist to work from, eliminating the need to make the translation from three dimensions into two. Whether the artist would actually trace the image or simply view the projection, the camera obscura aided in comprehending the complex translation to two-dimensionality, saving the perceptive work of mentally converting angles, proportions, and shades to t the at canvas. Venetian Renaissance artist Daniel Barbaro elaborated on this idea, writing, There on the paper you will see the whole view as it really is, with its distances, its colours and shadows
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and motion, the clouds, the water twinkling, the birds ying. By holding the paper steady you can trace the whole perspective with a pen, shade it and delicately colour it from nature (qtd. Camera). This idea, that the machine could provide a better, more realistic sight than the eye, would re-surface with force in the nineteenthcentury world of science. In The Image of Objectivity Daston and Galison observe that, Policing of subjectivity by the partial application of photographic technology was widespread in the last decades of the nineteenth century (100). It was advised to give the draughtsman no possibility for subjective alterations (Daston and Galison 101). In other words, camera obscura technology supposedly provided a way to reduce the human agency required in the production of images. The camera obscura, like the photograph that largely took its place in the nineteenth century, guaranteed an almost effortless accuracy (94). It supplied mechanical means to eliminate the wayward judgements of artists (94). This idea came to be known as non-interventionism. It developed from a growing desire in the world of science to strive for mechanicallyinstilled objectivity in scientic illustrations. In this climate, interpretation, selectivity, artistry, and judgement itself all came to appear as subjective temptations requiring mechanical or procedural safeguards (98). Machine-generated or partially machine-generated images were seen as inherently offering greater objectivity than images born solely under an artists discretion. (The debate over whether they actually did provide greater objectivity will have to be put on hold.) Amid this quest for objectivity, the camera obscuras naturalistic, automatic projection was truly valued. The medium provided one of the rst opportunities for the mechanization of image creation. Still, although projection was an automatic process, which was highly desired, we must remember that camera obscura images were themselves impermanent. For scientic purposes, such impermanence was unacceptable and impractical. According to cultural studies scholar Raymond Williams, It was not the projection but the xing of images which at rst awaited technical solution. By the 1880s the idea of a photographed reality was still more for record than for observation (Williams 16). There was still a very manual aspect to the creation of a permanent image with the camera obscura, as an artist would have to preserve the projected image by hand, either by tracing or by drawing it freehand. This meant that the problem of potential human error, or intervention was not completely
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resolved. The quest for pure objectivity continued, seeking a way to further remove the artist from the process of image creation. An opportunity arose in 1839 with the discovery of lightsensitive chemicals by English chemist William Talbot and French painter Louis Daguerre (Science). These chemicals were employed to make a stable record of the light and shadow that fell within the frame of a certain moment. This record, what we now know as a photograph, was considered an even greater step toward objectivity than the camera obscura projection. Not surprisingly, it was after this invention that the camera obscura began to descend into obscurity, largely because, with less automation, it required more human interpretation than this new, chemically created image. It was not simply that the autonomous camera came along and announced its superiority to the camera obscura (at the time, camera obscura images were more advanced, as they had color). Rather, it was the climate of intentional non-interventionism in the world of nineteenth-century science that retired the camera obscura from its life as a drawing tool. The legacy of the camera obscura became its instantaneous, perfectly detailed projection, which was valued by scientists in search of the objective image. This capability was to dene modern photographic technology. Meanwhile, the idea of transient, living imagery that had to be recorded by human hands all but gave up its life, despite the fact that impermanent imagery actually had qualities like color and movement that the early photograph did not. I say all but because the camera obscura would make a brief reappearance, in a quite different context. There were and still are limited instances where camera obscura imagery may be projected purely for observation. Shortly after its termination as a drawing tool, camera obscura was reborn as a sort of live visual entertainment, providing a unique way to observe a scene of interest. This idea was not completely new. As early as the fteenth century, the camera obscura had been set up as a theatre where actors would dance around outside a dark room where the audience sat. (One audience was so shocked by the colourful, moving, upside-down images that they thought they were witnessing sorcery (Camera).) But more importantly, in the early twentieth century, the camera obscura began popping up at fairs and tourist attractions as a new way to take in the surroundings. Camera obscura booths were set up in public areas everywhere from Central Park to San Francisco to England, often overlooking some location of
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interest. A 1901 ad for the opening of a Los Angeles camera obscura read:
It is in the heart of the cityHill and Third Streets, Los Angeles, Cal. The ride is inspiring and perfectly safe. The view from the towerAngels Viewis grand beyond compare, overlooking city, sea and mountains. The Camera Obscura, the most perfect in existence, puts a beautiful living picture of Third Street and vicinity on canvas before you. (qtd. Wilgus)

An 1898 sign for a camera obscura in Margate, England proclaimed Beautiful Effects Caused by Reection. Charge=2 pence (qtd. Wilgus). These sorts of camera obscuras were set up as walk-in booths where images from the outside world were projected onto a round table or other at surface for paid viewing. A few of these camera obscuras are still in place, and, in some cases, considered historical treasures. One is in Ithaca, at the Sciencenter. One enters a small, dark room and can view upside-down trafc moving along a highway on a screen. The entertainment camera obscura served a vastly different purpose from the old drawing-tool camera obscura. Society created a new niche for the technology when its previous one was deemed irrelevant. I think this goes to show that we should not underestimate the power of social/cultural/historical forces to invent the proper employments of a technology, and to assign values to certain qualities of that technology. A signicant shift took place: in its entertainment life, the camera obscura was valued not for its projected representation of objectivity and realism, but more for its novel representation of beautyits colorful, transient, moving images. Aspects of the same technology were assigned different values depending on the social situation. Despite these experimental uses, the camera obscura never really retained a strong status as a live entertainment medium. It became rare enough to be considered dead. In the future, it might prove interesting to consider why the camera obscura was not a popular success as visual entertainment. What cultural/social forces may have contributed to this? For now we can conclude that the camera obscura descended into obscurity as the new automatically-recording, light-sensitive paper offered more objectivity in the climate of non-interventionism than did an artists sketch of an impermanent camera-obscura projection. The legacy of the camera obscura survives in modern photography.
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Framed, detailed projection has been incorporated into the photographic technologies that we are familiar with today. And we can always wonder if in the future a situation could develop that might cause the camera obscura, or some aspect of it, to be reincarnated. Works Cited The Camera Obscura: Aristotle to Zahn. Adventures in Cybersound. 1 Nov. 2003 <http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/CAMERA_ OBSCURA.html>. Crary, Jonathan. Modernizing Vision. In Vision and Visuality. Ed. Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay Press, 1988. Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. The Image of Objectivity. Representations 40 (Fall 1992): 81128. 11 Nov. 2003 <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=07346018% 28199223%290% 3A40%3C81%3ATIOO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-GL>. Science, Optics & You: Timeline in Optics. In Molecular Expressions . Aug. 2003. 3 Nov. 2003 <http://www. microscopy.fsu.edu/ optics/timeline/1834-1866.html>. Wilgus, Jack, and Beverly Wilgus. The Magic Mirror of Life: An Appreciation of the Camera Obscura. Apr. 2002. 3 Nov. 2003 <http://brightbytes.com/cosite/ what.html>. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books, 1975.