I’ve known about this for a little while, I’ve followed its construction on Eliot Dudik’s Instagram feed. From his website, Eliot is “….founding the photography program within the Department of Art and Art History at the College of William & Mary where he is currently teaching and directing the Andrews Gallery at the college.” It’s really great to see, especially considering that I was on the College yearbook (Colonial Echo) staff as a photographer when I was a student there in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
If you don’t know what a Camera Obscura is, here’s a little description from Widipedia: “A camera obscura (Latin for “dark room”) is an optical device that led to photography and the photographic camera. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where it is reproduced, inverted (thus upside-down), but with color and perspective preserved.”
Also from Wiki: “The earliest extant written record of the camera obscura is to be found in the writings of Mozi (470 to 390 BC), a Chinese philosopher and the founder of Mohism. Mozi correctly asserted that the image in a camera obscura is flipped upside down because light travels in straight lines from its source. His disciples developed this into a minor theory of optics.”
So, I finally went down to see it yesterday. I’ve known about Camera Obscura’s for quite a while, but this is my first experience actually seeing one.
A class let out just before I left, so I was able to catch a few people in photos.
A little video “tour” (in this preview frame of the video, you can see one of the lenses on the right of the door):
Camera Obscura at the College of William and Mary from John Berry on Vimeo.
A sketch of the construction of the camera from Eliot’s Instagram
