Zoe Leonard’s take on Camera Obscura

Recently in my Core 2 class we have been learning about camera obscura, which if we are using the googled definition is: a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura#/media/File:1755_james_ayscough.jpg
However I think that the definition given to us by Google does not capture how cool camera obscura is; but an artist who does is Zoe Leonard. Leonard lives in New York City and uses a good majority of her environment as the main subject of her art work; in a video about her exhibition “Observation Point” she mentions that she decided to start working with camera obscura because she felt that a lot of people where too focused on asking her why she was still doing digital photography instead of other mediums of photography. Leonard wanted to bring back what she describes as a “natural phenomenon” because she felt that photography was in a moment of “flux” and she felt that there was a binary of analog vs digital.
Leonard also mentions that she wanted to “side-step” the endgame of analog vs digital. 

https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2014-biennial/zoe-leonard


Leonard mentions that how we see the world is an analogy for how we experience the world, how we perceive it; she hopes to offer the viewer a very immersive camera obscura she wants people to realize how effected we are by the architecture around us, the light that comes into the room.
“Your not just looking at the art your looking at how the building presents it to you” - Zoe Leonard.

https://www.artforum.com/picks/zoe-leonard-34671

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