I had the change to visit the Zoe Leonard exhibition in Chelsea which spoke a lot to my work.
Upon entering the gallery there was a giant white room; on each
wall hung one or two faded looking photos. There was a giant white circle in
the middle and faded gray around it. The images were of the sun. They had a
thin almost black boarder surrounded by another two-inch boarder around the
entire thing.
When
entering the second room, it was extremely dark and had a hole in the wall with
a lens in it. It was the camera obscura. We were encouraged to sit in the room
and as our eyes adjusted, we saw the images of the world surrounding the
building on the walls projected from the camera obscura. It created a very
relaxing and meditative environment; watching the movement from the outside
world in the dark room was very serene.
After
leaving this room and coming back into the first light room, the images on the
walls looked very different. They no longer looked washed out, but had much
more contrast in the tones that created them. Though the two rooms were very
different, yet they had a deeper connection than one might have originally
thought.
The
camera obscura has been seen many times before in different exhibitions and
throughout history in general, so some visitors might question why Leonard
decided to revisit it. Being prepared for this, she explains this answer in her
press release, stating that at this point in time, we all constantly seeing
images. She is asking questions about sight, and the camera obscura is a
different way of seeing an image- “it does not have to result in a fixed
image”. She continues on to explain that it creates a space and an experience; the
viewers are inside a camera.
The
press release definitely helps hold the exhibition together. Since it is such a
simple subject, the explanation really added dimension to the experience. I
really enjoyed reading her thoughts on the question of digital vs analogue. Her
response was “…I think the artist should choose whichever medium works best for
them.” This is a question I always debate (which I should be using), and it was
enlightening to read her thoughts, and how it lead her to create a camera
obscura. She also goes on to relate the camera obscura to the unconscious and
what happens inside of a person’s head. This is an interesting concept for me
to think about, since a lot of my pinholes are dream like.
