Sneak Preview: Powder House Camera Project
Somerville dog owner and local artist, Annie Smidt, welcomes guests inside the Powder House to see how her camera obscura—the biggest camera in Somerville—works.
On Saturday, June 26, participants in the Powder House Camera Project had their portraits taken by (not next to, but by means of) the powder house.
Smidt had covered all openings through which light could enter with the exception of a "pinhole" (about one-inch square) in the window of the powder house door. Through the pinhole the scene outside was projected on a screen inside.
Inside the powder house, as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we could see the scene outside projected (upside down and backwards) on the screen. First the dark trees against the bright sky, then the park sloping down to College Avenue where, occasionally, cars would pass by. Finally the eerie figures of people outside the powder house appeared, their voices, muffled by the stone walls, moving in the opposite direction of their bodies.
Jake, an Irish Setter who lives in Ten Hills, had his photo taken with his people Alan and Elaine. Inside the powder house Smidt took digital photos of the image on the screen. Each photo had a six-second exposure.
Annie's photos—the ones she took using the Powder House Camera—will be available soon on the Powder House Project website.
Other free-standing camera obcuras include Foredown Tower in in Portslade, England; the Giant Camera of San Francisco at Ocean Beach, and the camera obscura at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.