4.28.10 Cyanotype Prints

The above images are scanned prints from the series of cyanotypes I created this semester.

4.21.10 "The Oneness of Man"

Edward Steichen's The Family of Man photo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art was the major American photographic event of the 1950's. The project served "as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind," and it consisted of 508 images from 68 countries and 273 different photographers. The above image, taken by photographer W. Eugene Smith and entitled "A Walk to Paradise Garden," was one of the images included by Steichen in the exhibition. It captures two children walking from darkness into light and suggests this movement to be a symbol of the human experience.

4.19.10 Eliot Porter and Glen Canyon

The above image, taken by "atomic age" photographer Eliot Porter in 1961, was one in a series of photographs taken at Glen Canyon in Colorado. In Porter's acclaimed publication, The Place No One Knew, he captures what was lost when the damming of the Colorado River for electricity generation meant flooding Glen Canyon to create Lake Powell. The photo captures the natural beauty of the canyon while promoting an environmental cause. According to Porter, nature was "an undiluted source of pleasure and a reservoir of mysteries," and he wanted to use science and photography to understand and protect it.

4.14.10 Knowing the World through Reproductive Media

We live in a society of images. The final sentence of Chapter 14 (entitled Halftones to Bytes) reads as follows: "First, we see the world through a television, computer, or PDA; later, the world confirms what we have seen on the screen."

I captured the above image roughly a month ago on the final hill of a collegiate cycling road race in Newnan, GA. The results from the race show that the first few riders in the peloton in this photo finished in roughly this same order (though it was slightly different as the final sprint - which followed shortly after the photo was taken - took place), and they were posted online shortly after the event finished. Later, my photo was posted, and it served to confirm what took place that Saturday at the bike race.

4.12.10 Photo-Journalism as Art

Increasingly, in the modern age, photojournalists are creating images that draw our attention to horrific current events but also include a level of beauty and aesthetic. Often, academic critics claim that mixing art and journalism contaminates reality - that photographers are "beautifying grief and pain to achieve viewer satisfaction."

The above image, taken by acclaimed photographer James Nachtwey, was included as part of the "World Free of TB" exhibition at the United Nations in 2007. It captures tragedy by portraying a 12 year old Cambodian boy with a photo of his deceased mother; at the same time, the image contains a mystic beauty (caused by the smoke billowing and the serene backdrop).

4.9.10 Nabbing Time with Eisenstaedt

Alfred Eisenstaedt, famous photographer of the iconic V.J Day photo, nabs a moment in time with the above image. The photograph, captured in Paris in 1963 and entitled "Children at Puppet Theatre," portrays the reactions of children at a show; the facial expressions are comical to say the least.

Says Eisenstaedt about the photo, "It took a long time to get the angle I liked, but the best picture is the one I took at the climax of the action. It carries all the excitement of the children screaming, "The dragon is slain!" Very often this sort of thing is only a momentary vision, my brain does not register, only my eyes and finger react. Click."

4.7.10 Social Documents - "The Concerned Photographer"

Lewis Hine is perhaps my favorite photographer; a Columbia University sociologist converted to photography, he captured influential photos at Ellis Island and in the US child labor industry. His work served to document history, but, more importantly, it worked to bring about social justice. While statistics, surveys, and case studies are an important part of passing legislation, Hine offered the greatest factor through his photography by appealing to human empathy.

This image of "breaker boys" in 1910 helped influence changes in youth labor legislation early in the 20th century in America. In it, Hine captures a group of young boys who separate coal from slate daily in South Pittston, Pennsylvania.

4.5.10 Atget and Emptiness

Eugene Atget, a Parisian photographer who captured many images of the old quarters of Paris and its surrounding parks, spent thirty years making more than 10,000 images with an outdated wooden view camera. His images appear as dreams, and often Atget captures odd juxtapositions of objects or captures commonplace scenes without people. Essentially, he removed scenes from the rest of the world and preserved the Paris of the past.

The bottom image, entitled Coin de la Rue Valette et Pantheon and taken in 1925, preserves a ghostly scene in Paris. The top image, which I captured atop a hotel in Paris roughly three years ago during the morning, might mirror an image that Atget would make if he were alive and living today in Paris.

4.2.10 Cliche Vere

Cliche Verre is a method of etching, painting, or drawing on a transparent surface and printing the resulting image on a light sensitive paper. It was first practiced by several French painters during the early parts of the 19th century, but the process was also used by fantasy artist Max Ernst and continues to be utilized by modern artists.

The above image by Courtney Johnson is a modern form of Cliche Verre and portrays Mexico City.

3.31.10 Cyanotype Ideas

I would like to make several regular prints of architecture and scenery that I have captured on past trips as part of my cyanotype project. However, I would like to experiment at least once with outlining a plant specimen in the same fashion as Anna Atkins. Her book entitled British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions - the first to be printed and fully illustrated by Herschel's cyanotype - served to produce cameraless pictures of plant specimens for scientific investigation. Like Atkins, I would like to translate the 3D into 2D.

3.29.10 Hannah Hoch Image

Hannah Hoch was a Dada artist who pushed the idea of using mass-printed source material and invented what we now know as photomontage. She combined pieces of photographs to create new compositions; the photomontage copies the method of collage but is photographed and converted into a seamless print.

Hoch created this montage, entitled "High Finance," in 1923.

3.26.10 "Man with a Movie Camera"

Dziga Vertov's groundbreaking and experimental silent documentary film "Man with a Movie Camera" is famous due to the vast range of photographic techniques that the film maker used. The 1929 film presents life in several Soviet cities, capturing citizens at work and at play. Vertov's film has no storyline or actors, but it is acclaimed for its influential experimentation. In the short film, he employs "double exposure, fast and slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, extreme close-ups, footage reversed, and stop motion animations." He emphasizes that film has no boundaries.

The above movie still is taken from the film's opening shot and provides an example of Vertov's experimentation. In the image, he superimposes a shot of the cameraman setting his camera up on top of another camera.

3.24.10 "The Man in the Moon"

This is perhaps the most famous (and most comical) still frame from Georges Melies' 1902 silent film "A Trip to the Moon." Loosely based on From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells, it was the first science fiction film and met great acclaim at the time of its release. The above image portrays the man in the moon, as he watches the astronomers' capsule approaching him and is subsequently hit in the eye. The sequence in the movie is made comical because the texture of the moon seems to be of cream cheese.

3.22.10 Timeless Lumiere

The Lumiere brothers were among the earliest film makers. They created numerous silent films (usually around 1 minute in length) around the turn of the 20th century and were highly influential in the growth and popularity of film.

The link below corresponds with one of their most timeless and comical silent films, an 1896 sequence that captures two babies quarreling. The two girls dressed in bonnets are seated next to each other with trays. One girl reaches over to steal something from the other's tray and begins hitting her. The quarrel continues even though the victim begins crying. This particular film is interesting to me because it reflects an unchanging human condition - siblings will fight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22yNVsHLrEc&feature=related

3.19.10 An Attempt at Cubism via Photography

3.17.10 Photography and Modernism

With the dawn of the 20th century, photography - like other arenas of art - moved past "the traditional function to mirror nature" and developed into new styles and movements. The cubist movement in Paris (1907 - 1920) was highly influential during the time period. The cubists, lead by Picasso and Braque, embraced Enlightenment ideals and abandoned traditional one-point perspective. This Picasso cubist painting of normal dinner table decoration, entitled Carafe, Jug, and Fruit Bowl, serves as a good representation of the cubist style that fragmented ordinary images by considering them from numerous viewpoints simultaneously.

The cubist approach offers an interesting perspective (largely because it offers many perspectives at once), and it makes for art pieces with great character. However, to me, it seems fairly pointless. Cubism does not serve any greater purpose than to make us question what we see.

3.15.10 Pictorialism and Women Photographers

This image, captured by Anne W. Brigman in 1908 and titled "The Lone Pine," captures the essence of the Photo-Secession movement which she helped lead. Many of her most famous photos, which were taken between 1900 and 1920 depict nude women in natural contexts. Her work helped to promote photography as a fine art. When the viewer first glances at this photo, he/she might easily miss the woman kneeling on the rocks next to the tree; she almost seems to blend in with her surroundings - she is camouflaged in a sense. Her position parallels that of the tree that is bending out over the ledge, and warm soft light brings an emotional intensity to the photo. The image defies cultural norms accepted conventions, but it is organic and natural at the same time. The woman appears to be reflecting. She seems liberated.

3.3.10 Pictorialism and Naturalism

The above image, taken between 1900 and 1910 by Robert Demachy (founding member of the Photo-Club de Paris) and titled "Oude Rijn," captures the beauty of a landscape in Holland and reflects the philosophical ideas circulated by movements toward pictorialism and naturalism during the late 1800's.

As the public became fascinated with photography and the masses gained access to the ability to take photographs, many artists attempted to validate their skills and seperate snapshooters from professionals. By inaugurating art schools and offering certificate courses in photography the pictorialist movement sought to elevate the status of photographic art. The movement was based upon the core idea that images could engage senses and emotions in a "naturalistic manner." In the above image, Demachy provides a soft, non-detailed view with a sort of painterly quality, and his style very much reflects the principles of the movement which he helped lead.

3.1.10 The Autochrome and Innovation

The late 1800's and early 1900's saw great innovation in photography. The first image, an autochrome taken by Josef Jindřich Šechtl (circa 1908) of his future wife in a garden provides an example of what was, perhaps, the most important breakthrough of that era. The autochrome was the "first color process to get beyond hte novelty stage and become commercially successful." It allowed photographers access to the possibilities of color and added greater realism to the realm of photography. A second and different breakthrough came during the 1890's with the invention of the kinetoscope, a movie-like apparatus that allowed the individual to perceive motion when turning a crank moved film in from of a light source. This second still frame is taken from a film that shows Fred Ott sneezing.

Both processes made the arena of photography seem more realistic and paved the way for further advancements.

2.26.10 Muybridge in Motion

It began with a guy who wanted to prove that, at some point in travel, a horse runs with all four feet off the ground at the same time; soon, English photographer Eadweard Muybridge pioneered work that would show motion and influence later work with film. By using multiple cameras to capture motion and creating the zoopraxiscope, he could provide a series of photographs that displayed movement in time.

This Muybridge series captures a horse as it jumps and clears a pole. For me, the interesting thing about the event sequence that he captures is that the action captured is too fast in real life for us to take in with our own eyes. In the late 1800's, before many of our modern innovations, Muybridge had devised a way to slow down a sequence to freeze moments in time. That's pretty impressive.

2.24.10 "Art or Industry?"

Perhaps Charles Baudelaire would approve of this image, a 1961 print by Jerry

Uelsmann titled "Symbolic Mutation." With the increasing popularity of photography with the advent of the daguerrotype in the mid 1800's, Baudelaire made his complaints known; he saw photography as a "product of industry," an "impression of reality" that lacked the imagination of painting and only reflected the natural world. Simply put, he feared the death of art and blamed photography for what he saw as the demise of the art world. He saw photography only as a tool to be used in science, claiming that, "If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether....its true duty..is to be the servant of the sciences and arts." He later stated that, "if [photography] is allowed to encroach upon the domain of the... imaginary, upon anything whose value depends solely upon the addition of something of a man's soul, then it will be so much the worse for us."

I say that Baudelaire might approve of Uelsmann's image because he might not. A microscopic image of a snowflake would be a safer choice, but maybe Baudelaire could see this photo as a medium of creativity. It exhibits a non-realistic approach and is rich in symbolism, suggesting emotions and corresponding actions. Then again, who knows? Only Baudelaire.

2.22.10 Homecoming 1938 at Mercer

The above image is hanging in the upstairs section of the Connell Student Center at Mercer. It captures the crowd of people gathered for Mercer's Homecoming football game at Porter Stadium in 1938 and is one of my favorites on campus because it reflects a completely different era. Prestigious men are dressed in suits and tophats, and women wear conservative dresses. Several folks can be seen enjoying a Coke, and most all of the subjects appear fixed on the game. It's also interesting to note that this was one of the final seasons of Mercer football (because the team was not fielded during WWII and never returned following the war).

The difference of 70 years is striking. Today, we wear t-shirts and caps to sporting events, and we often choose to socialize with our friends instead of watching the contest. From my perspective, individuality plays a much greater role today than it appeared to in 1938. Perhaps it is the uniformity of the subjects and the lack of emotion on faces that contributes to the mystique of this image.

2.19.10 "Not Such a Civil War"

This image, taken by Civil War photographer Timothy H. O'Sullivan during Grant's Wilderness Campaign in May of 1864, captures a dead Confederate soldier in Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia.

2.17.10 Riis: The Humanitarian Photographer

Jacob Riis realized that words could not fully convey reality, so he used photography to bring about reform. An immigrant from Denmark, he became a police reporter in the slums of New York during the 1870's and began a pioneering effort to document the scandalous conditions of his time. With explosive flash cartridges fired with a revolver, Riis illuminated the "unmerciful, claustrophobic life of destitution" and allowed the public a first glimpse at the poverty at their doorstep. His life was dedicated to bringing about what he called "social uplift."

This photo serves as a fantastic representation of Riis' mission. This photograph, taken in 1889 and included in his project titled How the Other Half Lives, depicts three "urchins" huddling for warmth in a window well. By capturing homeless and filthy children sleeping on the streets, he reached the collective consciousness of society and brought about reform. His message was this: No child should have to sleep outside.

2.15.10 "Covering Calamity"

These photos, taken by Roger Fenton and Felice Beato respectively, provide examples of early attempts to capture journalistic images of their time.

Fenton was a pioneering British photographer who, backed by a number of wealthy individuals, captured photos of the Crimean War and provided some of the first images surrounding battle. While he never photographed a dead body, he did establish the descriptive stylistic basis for photographers who covered the American Civil War. The top image, taken in 1856, shows a general conversing with one of his staff officers.

Beato, an Italian-British photographer, did similar groundbreaking work in journalism, covering war and providing some of the first images from East Asia. The latter image, taken in the 1870's depicts three men carrying a woman in a kago in Japan.

Fenton and Beato provided much of the basis for photojournalism today, but many differences have emerged throughout the last century and a half. Growth in technology now allows photographers the opportunity to capture instantaneous motion without fear of danger; our images of modern war are much more intimate. In addition, modern photojournalists often adopt more artistic approaches, incorporating aesthetic principles in their subject matter rather than simply capturing reality.

2.12.10 "Not Two Alike"

Wilson A. Bentley once described snowflakes as "tiny miracles of beauty;" throughout his life, Bentley worked at the intersection of art and science. At the age of 20 in 1885, he attached a bellows camera to a compound microscope and captured the first image of a snowflake which he had caught on black velvet. During his lifetime, he captured more than 5,000 images of crystals. In addition, Bentley collaborated with a professor at the University of Vermont to write an article which argued that no two snowflakes were alike.

Bentley's snowflakes are beautiful - they capture the ornate symmetry that is often overlooked in the world.

2.10.10 "Stereo Ain't Just for Music"

This pair of photos of a young couple at tea (taken around 1853 by Thomas Honywood) provides a good example of a stereo photograph. By looking at the two slightly different images side by side through a binocular device, you can approximate human vision and create depth of field, which creates a 3D aura and makes the picture seem more realistic (this works because our eyes are set apart and transmit slightly different images to the brain - which fuses them into one image).

This stereograph, though likely staged, seems to present a reflective and intimate moment for the couple shown, and would probably look really cool in stereo vision.

Also, check out the following website. It takes images from a Bar Mitzvah and rapidly fires back and forth to provide an experience similar to binocular vision: http://www.squareamerica.com/bm4.htm

2.8.10 Victorian Photocollage

The above photocollage created by Mary Georgiana Caroline in England during the 1860's serves as an example of obscure art from the Victorian era that is now gaining renewed interest in the art arena. Often, collage is thought to have been introduced by the cubists during the first years of the 20th century, but a current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art displays homemade art created by women in upperclass England during the Victorian era. Many of the photocollages from that era include cutout carte de visites and share several shared conventions, including the portrayal of vividly colored drawing rooms like that in the above image.

For me, the most interesting point concerning the renaissance of this old art is the fact that it remained hidden for so long. It suggests that women have a much greater role in art history that has previously been thought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/arts/design/05victorian.html

2.5.10 Ambrotype and Carte de Visite Comparison

Both the carte de visite and the ambrotype became popular collodion processes during the mid 1800's. The top image displays an uncut sheet of carte de visites produced around 1850. The carte de visite, or visiting card, was a 2 1/4 by 3 1/2 inch photograph mounted on a paper card. Numerous exposures were made on a single wet plate (making it possible to place a variety of poses on a single sheet), decreasing the cost of one print. The carte was considered chic throughout Europe in the late 1850's and 1860's.

The latter image, a portrait of an American soldier (1861-1865), provides a good example of an ambrotype. Devised from the Greek word meaning "imperishable," the ambrotype was similar to the daguerrotype but lacked a highly reflective surface and was less expensive to make.

Both processes served their individual purposes. Ambrotypes provided a cheaper alternative to the daguerrotype, while still maintaining much of the ornateness (usually surrounded by ornate frames), and carte de visites provided for small images that could be used for social situations.

2.3.10 "Big Boxes" and Large Format Photography

The above photo, taken by Ansel Adams of "Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake" in 1948, is a good example of large format photograpy. When we say "large format," we are simply describing the large photographic films, cameras, view cameras, and photographic processes that use a format of 4x5 or greater; the most common formats are 4x5 and 8x10, but 11x14, 16x20, and 20x24 inch cameras do exist. The majority of large format cameras have adjustable fronts and backs, which allow photographers to better control the perspective and depth of field of their images; for this reason, large format cameras have often been used to photograph architecture and landscapes. We can see in this photo that Ansel Adams is able to capture great clarity and depth of field in the image of this scene, largely because of the control that his large format grants him.

2.1.10 A Romantic Comparison

Asher B. Durand's 1849 painting, "Kindred Spirits" is the first image shown; it provides a good example of a Romantic style painting. In it, Durand depicts two men standing with the Catskill Mountains in the background. The second image - a photograph with Romantic concepts - is taken from William Henry Fox Talbot's series of Sun Pictures in Scotland from 1845. It presents the tomb of Sir Walter Scott and consists of rich, deep tones and Gothic shadows.

Both are well grounded in the Romantic aesthetic. The emphasize picturesque settings - one with a flowing river, glowing clouds, and mountains, and the other with overgrown foliage and a decaying structure. Though different in their own respects, both images build on concepts of the sublime and beautiful, dynamic lighting and shadows, and delicate and well-proportioned beauty.

Find an example of a painting and a photographic image made in the Romantic Era. (Think William Blake)Compare the two images and write about their similarities.

1.29.10 "The Fox and his Awesome Camera Box"

William Henry Fox Talbot was among the first people to experiment with photography; in 1839, he devised a salted paper process for creating images which he termed "photogenic drawing." Later, Talbot developed a procedure which used "iodized paper" and allowed him to create negatives, which could then be used to make an infinite number of tonally correct positive copies of an image. He called this new method the calotype, which, translated into Greek, means "good impression." When photography was introduced to the public, the calotype was not a success; the daguerreotype was characterized by having greater clarity and intense detail, it had an economic and political advantage over the calotype, and the first calotype processes were slow and produced prints that would fade over time. By the mid 1850's, however, Talbot's negative/positive system gained greater attention and overtook the famed daguerreotype. The initially perceived faults of Talbot's process (required time, visual softness, limited tonal range, and undesired graininess) became positive attributes, as artists realized the artistic potential (greater ability to create more of an emotional atmosphere through photography) of the calotype and the reality of mass-production via negatives. The calotype offered a versatility and flexibility to photographers that the daguerreotype could not match, and it became the process of choice as the Romantic period emerged.

The above image, entitled Oak Tree in Winter at Lacock Abbey, is a salt paper print created by Talbot in the early 1840's.

1.27.10 "Light and Lightning" - The Daguerreotype and Science

The daguerreotype, the photographic process created by Frenchman Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre in the mid 1830's, reigned supreme from 1839 through the 1850's. The dangerous process (which often caused severe sickness because it relied on the heating of mercury vapor) produced "a whitish amalgram of silver and mercury formed on a plate where it had been exposed to light." It saw rapid growth, as the masses gained access to photography; "the daguerreotype was the great equalizer, providing ordinary people wiht access to pictures of themselves and their loved ones."

By the mid-1800's, the scientific application of photography emerged. The dawn of optical devices like the microscope and telescope changed how people perceived the world, and photographers began to use photography as a way to record the natural world. During the 1840's William H. Goode made daguerreotypes from a solar microscope. In 1851, John Adams Whipple created the first successful daguerreotype of the moon by using a telescope. Around the same time T.M. Easterly, a photographer from St. Louis, captured lightning with a daguerreotype. The above photo displays the image that Easterly captured.

1.25.10 A Look at the "Big Picture"

The world's largest photograph doesn't capture the sprawling expanse of a city or the peaceful tranquility of sunrise over the ocean; rather, it records an unlikely scene composed of "a dilapidated air-traffic control tower, an overgrown runway and palm trees clustered amid rolling hills." During July of 2006, a group of photographers created a massive camera obscura in a decommissioned Marine Corps air hangar as a part of the Legacy Project in Irvine, California. Fabric measuring "33 by 111 feet" was covered in "20 gallons of light-sensitive emulsion" and exposed to light (which entered the hangar through a gum ball sized hole in the buildings door) for a number of days; the fabric was then developed in a tub of "200 gallons of black-and-white developer solution and 600 gallons of fixer." The photograph captured and preserved the layout of the base (where plans were unfolding to develop the land into a park, sports complex, and residential housing area); in this way, the world's largest photograph both made history and recorded it. The above photo displays the inverted image created on the canvas with the photographers involved in the project.

The photograph produced by the Legacy Project is the largest single exposure ever created; it is interesting to note that most of the images which are claimed to be the largest are often produced by stitching numerous smaller images together. The Gigapixel Dresden, created in December of 2009, combines "1655 overlapping 21.6 megapixel images" to produce a highly detailed panoramic view of the city of Dresden, Germany. Photographing the array of images took roughly three hours, and the synthesis of the images into a single photo required nearly four days. The final product (shown above with considerably less clarity) was 102 gigabytes in size and was composed of 26 gigapixels. The following link allows the viewer to experience the view of Dresden via the original and to zoom into the image: http://www.dresden-26-gigapixels.com/dresden26GP

Sources: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13856731
http://gizmodo.com/5429290/26031250000-pixels-make-this-the-biggest-photo-in-the-world

1.22.10 "That's Photogramtastic."

This photographic greeting card composed by London-based photographer Dave Eva is a prime example of a photogram, an image created without a camera. Photograms can be produced by placing objects directly onto a photosensitive material (in this case photopaper) and then exposing the setup to light. A negative shadowlike image results; its tonal range is dependent on the exposure time and the level of transparency for the objects used.

It is argued that William Henry Fox Talbot produced the first photographic images using this technique; he placed leaves and pieces of material onto light sensitive material and exposed them to the light of the sun, producing white outlines which were called photogenic drawings. Made famous by artists like Man Ray (who called his images "rayographs"), photograms like Eva's can serve many purposes. In the mid 1840's botanist Anna Atkins created a book of cyanotype photograms that captured the images of botanical specimens; in modern times, photograms can capture abstract images and communicate different ideas.

1.20.09 "Camera Obscura"

This photograph, taken by photographer Abelardo Morell and titled Houses Across the Street in Our Bedroom, captures the essence of modern art via camera obscura. This simplified version of a natural camera occurs when light reflecting from illuminated objects passes through a minute hole (called a pinhole) into a darkened area and projects an inverted, but exact, image of that object. Recorded history tells us that people have known about camera obscuras since ancient times (Aristotle first recorded this phenomenon around 330 BC when he observed a projection of the sun during an eclipse after the light had penetrated through small holes between the leaves of a tree.) Throughout time, people developed devices that used the camera obscura to aid in drawing (so that a projected image could be traced); Leonardo da Vinci designed a dark chamber in 1490 that employed the camera obscura and became the prototype of the photographic camera. However, it was not until the work of Niepce, Daguerre, Talbot, Herschel and others during the early to mid 1800s that images created by cameras could be permanently captured. Since that time, many advances have occurred in the field of photography, but we still owe the possibility of our modern cameras to the discovery of the camera obscura.

We make use of camera obscuras during each waking moment; our eyes serve as automatic camera obscuras that provide us with vision (light enters the pupil, travels through the lens, is projected onto the retina upside down, and is sent through the optic nerve to be processed by the brain). Camera obscuras have also been the objects of tourist attraction in the past; the Garden of the Gods in Colorado features a naturally occurring camera obscura, and Rock City in Chattanooga, Tennessee attracted visitors with a camera obscura during 1960's and early 1970's.

When we view modern work by artists such as Abelardo Morell, it is easy to lose ourselves in the sort of "fantasy worlds" that they capture with created landscapes and projected camera obscuras. The images that they create are impressive and rich in detail. It's all too ironic though, when we consider that the camera obscura is the most simplified version of a camera. With this image by Morell, the viewer is confronted by both ancient and modern, and it is beautiful.