Obskur V.1
Eva Maria Dreisiebner
Video 3:22 min
Austria 2017
In this ongoing experiment a smartphone is used to film the surroundings through a large-format camera. In functional terms this apparatus is still very close to the camera obscura. Light is captured by a ground glass, a rough and milky glass plane, which is needed to set up the image. The phone captures this “live” projection of the outside world before it is shot as a photograph. The technique of filming the ground glass and the functionality of a typical smartphone camera make the circle of the image appear smaller and with more contrast.
The lines on the glass suggest measurement, as in land surveying, architectural or crime scene photography, and question the possibility of truth or objectivity in photographic technologies. The combination of filming this rough glass plane of a maximum-resolution camera with the weak technology of a phone, which claims to be HD, is particularly absurd.
A historical bridge is made between the analog, mechanical photo-technique and the today commonplace use of mobile phone cameras, which recalls the shared technological roots of lens-based media, photography, and film. Questions arise about the materiality and the localization of the photographic image today, about ways of looking at visual media and the dimensions and temporal shifts while taking and/or looking at pictures.
Obskur V.1 is the first part of an ongoing project, therefore the plan is now to test various motifs with this method. The next steps, among others, will be to get closer to individuals and portraits and to experiment with different points of view and their effects. (Eva Maria Dreisiebner)
Eva Maria Dreisiebner, born 1987 in Graz, lives and works in Linz, Austria.
