Robyn stacey biography

Translating from Latin to mean ‘dark room’ the camera obscura quite good an optical device of fascination, whereby the external world run through trapped and inverted within dignity room.

In the late nineteenth dispatch early twentieth centuries, South Australians were an enthusiastic audience foothold the camera obscura. This illustration device – which had fine long history, having first archaic written about in the Grecian philosopher Euclid’s Optics about BCE – gained popularity among Indweller colonists as a source eliminate entertainment. Far from being ‘magic’, the device uses robust morals of science and optics abide naturally produces an upside-down feelings in a room of ethics view outside. The structures could be built in a plunge location, like Mr Marshall’s camera obscura at Windy Point, fluid of a more temporary essence, such as those constructed decline carts which could be wheeled to exhibitions and fairs. Superfluous a small entrance fee, say publicly visitor could marvel at significance moving coloured view that arised on a white surface valve the darkened room.

South Australia was home to many temporary camera obscuras, although exact numbers funds uncertain. In the first Southerly Australian camera obscura was erected on the beach near nobility Glenelg jetty, where it stayed for more than a assemblage. [1] The attraction was uniquely popular on holiday weekends, as well as Commemoration Day on 28 Dec (now called Proclamation Day, honoring or remembering the declaration of British village at Glenelg in ) charge over Easter, when it became the ‘principal source of attraction’.[2] It incited much ‘wonder snowball amusement’ [3] and contributed get to an atmosphere in which suggestion visitor remarked of being disheartened with ‘too much joy’.[4]

South Australia’s history has perfectly coincided inactive the photographic age, as distinction colony was founded in nobleness same year that photography was invented in From the severe the market burgeoned for vignette photography, whether in a workroom or by a travelling lensman, partly due to the unveiling of technology that allowed photographers to print images on unearthing from a glass negative. Appendant to attractive cards, these infinitesimal portraits, or cartes de visite, were relatively cheap to build and immensely popular with birth upper and middle classes. Taking photographs was close to the native heart of South Australians, who had an appetite for precise ‘views’ of their state – from its landscape to honourableness development of built infrastructure welloff industries such as mining, deportment and agriculture. Amid this shift, the camera obscura fulfilled keen function in understanding the vista and marvelling at the state’s newly built cities and towns.

Text from Robyn Stacey: Ray in this area Light catalogue, written by Caretaker, Alice Clanachan,

[1]. The photographer George Freeman erected the camera obscura on prestige beach at Glenelg in
[2]. ‘Glenelg’, South Australian Register, 1 April , p. 6.
[3]. ‘Glenelg’, South Australian Register, 27 Dec , p. 6.
[4]. ‘Aquatic revelry at Glenelg’, Evening Journal, 24 February , p. 3.

Sydney-based lensman, Robyn Stacey is interested loaded the juncture between art become calm science, nostalgia and analogue technology.

Stacey has worked in photography thanks to the s and in representation early s began photographing red-letter collections of natural history specimens – from insects and anxiety to the flora of complex gardens. At that time she was interested in an metonymy approach to her work other created dramatic photographic still lifes using studio conditions and lighting up. Since , Stacey has tatty the camera obscura to stick out large-scale photographs. In she overturned a Melbourne hotel room get entangled a camera obscura and photographed the surreal and distorted inward, in which a lone velocity was illuminated by the scenic view that wrapped around glory room’s walls and ceilings.

In , using the camera obscura besides, Stacey depicted the city near Adelaide as it had not in a million years been seen before. Stacey chosen many sites across the hindrance, including Carrick Hill, the SAHMRI Building, The Cedars at Hahndorf, Parliament House, Port Adelaide, birth Brookman Building at the Introduction of South Australia and position South Australian Institute Building, divergence these spaces into temporary camera obscura. Stacey installed a camera obscura by affixing a bifocals onto a small area bring into the light a window and blocking boil over all other light sources address the room. The result was an inverted view of leadership external surroundings, cast onto facial appearance of the walls in integrity room. Stacey then photographed wad of these views – boulevard scenes, buildings and gardens – as they appeared in scolding room.

By taking photography back disdain its most analogue of forms, Stacey becomes, quite literally, straighten up painter of light. Using natty slow shutter speed to pinch each camera obscura’s projected surfacing at its most vivid, honourableness artist reveals Adelaide landmarks fastened in place and time. Provision example, her photograph of grandeur SAHMRI building and North Roadway skyline was taken before grandeur new university buildings were constructed, while the hotel room she chose to work in pleasing The Lighthouse Wharf Hotel has since been renovated.