LANDSCAPE OF THE GAZE
Starting November 18th, 2021
A virtual exhibition of Camera Obscuras and Drawings by Homa Shojaie
LIGHT
Inside each camera obscura every surface is covered with film. When light enters the box through a pinhole, it makes an inverted image of the outside on its opposite wall. This is a photographic image since light has passed through a pinhole. There are as many images of the outside as there are pinholes.
The camera is exposed to light for about one hour. Once light has entered the box, the interior surfaces reflect the light and record the events inside the box. Since there are no pinholes in the interior of the box, these interior images are produced solely by the action of light on film, therefore creating photograms.
The photographic images of the outside and the photograms of the inside are simultaneously recorded on all the interior surfaces.
TIME
The box sees and records the inside and the outside in two different ways which creates a distinction between two qualitative times: “outside time”, the time contained in the images of outside, and “inside time”, the time contained in the photograms of inside.
Since the box records all that occurs for a long and continuous duration, the image contains a volume of time rather than a section of time as in a film frame or a snapshot.
SELF-PORTRAIT
In the process of seeing and recording the outside and the inside, each box makes a self-portrait. This is an interior self-portrait, the result of how the box sees and records its exterior world and its own interior.
After being exposed to light, the box is taken back to the darkroom where all film is removed from the interior surfaces, developed, and printed. The arrangement of all the many surfaces follows the logic of unfolding and flattening each volume. When all the interior surfaces are unfolded, a map of the interior volume of the box emerges, as if the box was seeing it’s face from inside, similar to the underside of a mask. This multi-sided image contains photographs of the outside, outside time, photograms of the inside, and inside time. Each box is a vessel or a character. It looks at the world and itself in its own specific way. The self-portrait contains a specific truth that is inherent in the program of the camera, and as such these are not good or bad or strong or weak portraits. Every portrait is a true interior self-portrait of the camera that produces it. Each box is the actual body that produces its own portrait. Through the way that it sees, it reveals the boundaries of its outside and the limits of its inside.
