Taken with Time: a camera obscura project

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For the exhibition Taken with Time: a camera obscura project, 2006, Ann Hamilton, Vera Lutter and Abelardo Morell were invited to Philadelphia to create new works using camera obscuras. (The camera obscura is a photographic device that captures an optical phenomenon in which light entering a darkened space through a small hole produces an image of the outside environment.) The artists worked in a variety of spaces in the city, from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to a shipping crate in the Cira Center parking garage, to the Free Library. The process and cameras themselves became sculptural and interactive, as each artist used the medium in innovative and groundbreaking ways. Through this project, dozens of artworks created by these world-class artists became part of numerous Permanent Collections in Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Rosenbach Library and Carpenter’s Hall.

This project and the subsequent publication were funded by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Watch a two minute documentary of the three camera obscura projects in the exhibition Taken with Time: a camera obscura project presented by The Print Center.