Panoramic Camera Obscura
1987
interactive public sculpture (camera obscura), preliminary model and planning drawings
Panoramic Camera Obscura was created in 1987 for a temporary sculpture exhibition called The Garden Party during Lawrence’s Masters in Fine Arts studies at York University, Toronto, Ontario. The outdoor exhibition provided a context for the artists to address the surrounding landscape and in Lawrence’s case, the camera obscura was an opportunity to capture the quality of light at this site, an interest that drew artists of the 15th century to use this pre-photographic technology. This work became a precursor for Lawrence’s numerous camera obscura works throughout the 2000s.
Once inside the Panoramic Camera Obscura, viewers were able to push the structure around in a circular fashion to view a moving panoramic image of the surrounding university campus. In 2015, Lawrence reimagined this work as a tent-like pavilion camera obscura with a mirror-based-lens mechanism for the Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival, organized by Lawrence in Dawson City, Yukon. Whereas his first camera obscura used a pinhole to let in light, most subsequent camera obscura works have used a lens. Lawrence first saw two 19th century tower-type cameras obscura on a research trip to Dumfries and Edinburgh, Scotland in 1989. He has since researched other existing historical cameras obscura in such places as Bristol, Florence, London, the Isle of Man and San Francisco. This research is intrinsically tied to Lawrence’s lens-based camera obscura works.
Photo: SITE Photography.
