George Black Camera Obscura
2015
interactive public sculpture (camera obscura), documentation
Donald Lawrence created the George Black Camera Obscura as part of the Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival, an interdisciplinary project initiated and organized by Lawrence and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through Thompson Rivers University. Held in Dawson City, Yukon, in the summer of 2015, the Festival brought together an international group of artists and researchers interested in cameras obscura and related optical phenomenon to explore the meeting places of art and science, and cultural and “wilderness” settings. The Festival was held during the summer solstice, taking advantage of the longest day of the year in order to allow the projects to be viewed most effectively. It featured multiple site-specific installations throughout Dawson City and included coinciding exhibitions at the ODD Gallery and the SOVA Gallery. It also included a wide range of workshops, tours and public talks, all focused around the theme of the camera obscura.
Lawrence installed a camera obscura covered in tarred-canvas on the railing of the George Black ferry which crosses the Yukon River to provide free access for motorists travelling through Dawson City from the North Klondike Highway to the Top of the World Highway. By sticking their heads inside the framework, passengers could view a projected moving image of the surrounding landscape during the ferry’s crossing. The tarred- canvas covering alludes to nautical settings and to provisions prospectors might have carried with them during the Klondike Gold Rush in the 1890s, connecting to the history of this site.
The project includes the camera obscura structure and its preparatory model, as well as photographs, drawings, ephemeral material and videos of the ferry crossing the river and the view inside the camera obscura. With this camera obscura viewers see a live projection of the moving landscape rather than a fixed view. Like his other cameras obscura, this site-specific work shifts the viewer’s perspective and experience of the every day crossing, inviting passengers to see the environment around them anew.
Donald Lawrence, George Black Camera Obscura, 2015. Interior Projection. Photo: Donald Lawrence.
