At first glance, it looks likes any other grain bin on a southern Alberta farm. But upon further investigation it is a complex piece that bridges science and art.
A nearly 100-year-old bin has been re-purposed as a camera obscura.
Camera obscuras use a simple lens and a mirror to project a live view of whatever is around them down into a dark room, or in this case, an empty grain bin.
“It has the ability to have the lens and mirror that are at the top of it rotate 360 degrees,” artist Donald Lawrence said. “The lens and the mirror carry inside an image of the surrounding landscape which you see before you on the table in the middle.”
Lawrence said these historical scientific buildings were an early glimpse into how human eyes work and the start of the technological advances in photography.
“The interest grew out of wanting to capture these fleeting images in cameras obscuras,” Lawrence said. “The camera obscura became largely obsolete as a technological scientific device.”
The camera obscura is now a permanent art piece at the Coutts Centre for Western Canadian Heritage near Nanton, Alta.
Jim Coutts was an avid art collector and left his farm to the University of Lethbridge after his passing in 2013.
Curator Dr. Josephine Mills knew Lawrence would be able to combine his art and research on camera obscuras with the history of the landscape in southern Alberta.
The piece is near completion and the public has already been stopping by to marvel at the simplicity and wonder of the work.
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