Featured on PDR in the essay Watching the World in a Dark Room: The Early Modern Camera Obscura

Centuries before photography froze the world into neat frames, scientists, poets, and artists streamed transient images into dark interior spaces with the help of a camera obscura. Julie Park explores the early modern fascination with this quasi-spiritual technology and the magic, melancholy, and dream-like experiences it produced.

Illustration of a camera obscura

Date

1868

From

Elementary Treatise on Physics, Experimental and Applied, 3rd ed


Underlying Rights

Public Domain Worldwide

Digital Rights

No Additional Rights

  • Labelled “Not in Copyright”
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Image Size

1806 x 1299