Watching the World in a Dark Room
The Early Modern Camera Obscura

By Julie Park

Centuries before photography froze the world into neat frames, scientists, poets, and artists streamed transient images into dark interior spaces with the help of a camera obscura.

https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-early-modern-camera-obscura/?utm_source=newsletter

Books about Photography at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/117

#camera_obscura #photography #optics

Illustration of the camera obscura principle from James Ayscough's A short account of the eye and nature of vision (1755 fourth edition).

A camera obscura  is the natural phenomenon in which the rays of light passing through a small hole into a dark space form an image where they strike a surface, resulting in an inverted (upside down) and reversed (left to right) projection of the view outside.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1755_james_ayscough.jpg

Original image:
https://archive.org/details/b30373177/page/n33/mode/2up

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

@gutenberg_org@mastodon.social

Awesome. Camera Obscura is central to the movie "In the Cut."

#film #movies #cameraobscura #megryan

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    @gutenberg_org@mastodon.social The camera obscura is the same device credited with helping Vermeer create his masterpieces. Of course, there is much more to mastery, such as composition and rendition.

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