North Carolina Artist, Jim Southerland, Re-Discovers
11th-Century Optical Drawing Techniques, Applies Them to Monoprint Printmaking and Tells All in a Book

North Carolina artist, Jim Southerland has recently published a 50-page booklet chronicling his 25 years of experience with a homemade and home-refined camera obscura. What is a "camera obscura?" you ask. According to the Wikipedia: "The camera obscura (Lat. "dark chamber") was an optical device used in drawing, and one of the ancestral threads leading to the invention of photography. It's the reason why photographic devices today are still known as "cameras." The principle of the camera obscura can be demonstrated with a rudimentary type, just a box (which may be room-size) with a hole in one side, (see pinhole camera for construction details). Light from only one part of a scene will pass through the hole and strike a specific part of the back wall. The projection is made on paper on which an artist can then copy the image. The advantage of this technique is that the perspective is right, thus greatly increasing the realism of the image. With this simple do-it-yourself apparatus, the image is always upside-down. By using mirrors, as in the 18th century overhead version, it is also possible to project a right-side-up image. Another more portable type, is a box with an angled mirror projecting onto tracing paper placed on the glass top, the image upright as viewed from the back.

"Allegedly the discovery of the camera obscura was accidental, sometime in early 11th century Egypt. A Muslim named Abu Ali Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haitham (965-1039 CE), known in the West as Al-Hazen, is accredited for its discovery while carrying out practical experiments on optics. In his various experiments, Ibn Al-Haitham used the term 'Al-Bayt al-Muthlim,' translated into English as 'dark room.'"

Jim's camera obscura, which he refers to as art•to•thee•too, is a 10"x10"x17" wooden box with a double-convex magnifying fixed vertically at one end. This is the "eye." A fresnel lens is mounted at the center of the box, from the base of which a flat mirror extends at a 45-degree angle, which reflects light from the lenses through a sheet of clear glass to the viewer. Images appear reversed left-to-right while looking into the camera obscura. Contour lines are marked onto the glass with an ink pen by outlining what is seen through the box. A black umbrella blocks overhead glare. In order to pull a print off the glass, Jim moistens asheet of paper with alcohol and places it over the drawing in the glass. The ink drawings "lift" from the glass when the back of the paper is rubbed with a squeegee. The resulting print returns the image to the subject's original relative position, as with traditional printmaking. These "wet monoprints" resemble certain intaglio techniques. Jim sometimes also combines other media over the print.*

Jim discovered the camera obscura design in a magazine, and in 1978, in a cabin in the North Carolina mountains, he built his camera. He has improved it over the years, with new, more-perfect lenses and other innovations. In 1980 he began drawing free portraits of children "in order for them to share the creative experience," as he puts it.

Jim's book, My Camera Obscura, 25+ Years, published by art-to-thee-too, Black Mountain, North Carolina, is available directly from the artist at: www.southerlandfineart.com.

Below: A selection of Jim's images produced with his camera obscura.

Editor's note: If you placed a sheet of acetate over the glass, the drawing-on-acetate could then be used to expose a solar plate with interesting results.