Camera Obscura

June 06, 2007

I'm really not sure that I've yet a complete handle on all that happened from last Friday to this last Monday, but I'll give it my best shot. If you want the "skinny" I'd say it was a minor miracle, a testing of my physical, emotional, psychological, and cognitive stamina--with apologies to war veterans, I'd say it was a bit like combat with a more sublime outcome. Nietzsche is often quoted about things that don't kill you making you stronger. I couldn't agree more. I think this may have been my rite of passage to become an independent artist. If I could triumph under these conditions, I can likely do anything.

I'm a photographer. I make images; I manipulate matter on a microscopic scale. I've tried to stay focused (no pun intended) on that goal over the last year. I have a friend named Susan. She's an architect, but really she's an artist. She will end up being a full time artist, maybe even one that gets remembered in the history books. But she's not an artist like me. She's the kind of artist whose work will either be totally unsaleable or will be going for millions. In the meantime, she'll get by on grants, fellowships and residencies while I hussle to sell my photos.

Somehow, whatever bug buzzes in her bonnet, got into mine over a facet of a project she signed on to do in an abandoned church in Braddock Pennsylvania, a near ghost town just above Pittsburgh. The project is part of "Salvation/Salvage" coordinated by artist Clarinda MacLow out of New York City. The germ of the idea was to have some way of having people at street level see out of the belfry of the structure. The original idea was for a periscope, which I investigated (I nearly wrote "looked into") and deemed impractical and too complex to build. I may have even been thinking about camera obscuras before this point, but the idea of making the belfry a giant camera obscura somehow captured my imagination. I wasn't really thinking about what the concept behind the installation was, it just seemed like something that was begging to be done. As I said to Susan "This somehow makes everything else I've been doing feel small."

The orginal concept was for the whole tower to be the camera and the image would reflect into a pool a the bottom, but the way the tower was built made this impossible. I bought two huge 14" focal length, 4" wide, opaque projector lenses on e-Bay for about $60.00. (I used only one so far.) With my friend, sculptor Chris Smith, who has a woodshop, we built a prototype camera that I dubbed "Bessie" since the lenses had been made by the Charles Beseler Company. Together we did very well. The camera consisted of a front standard, a rear standard made of stretcher bars to hold the groundglass, a lightweight baseboard and steel straps to brace the front to the back. The camera was mostly "air" and we used plastic garbage bags to cover the sides. The niftiest thing was Chris discovered that some kind of PVC drainpipe fitting held the lens like a perfect sleeve. We used that for the lensmount.

I did some testing with Bessie in my house and what we had in mind looked do-able: mount the camera in a window somewhere in the belfry and then use regular household mirrors to reflect the fairly bright image down to the vestibule of the church. As long as the belfry wasn't too bright, it would work.

So, I broke Bessie down and shipped her to my friend Susan in Pittsburgh. I arrived shortly afterward and we set to work to make the whole business fly. Susan had sent me some plans of the space, but I really hadn't given them too much thought. It looked like there was one space where we could just set the camera and then it was just a matter of postioning a few mirrors. I had planned to arrive on Friday, work Saturday and return to Philadelphia on Sunday.

Let me preface by saying I don't like shmutz. Dirt I'm OK with, you know, dirt is the stuff that plants grow in. Ditto for anything natural, hair, dead skin cells, semen, even a bit of dried snot, I'm fine. It's industrial shmutz, like coal dust, plaster dust, pulverized paint and any other manner of unknown crap that gives me the willies. When my house was renovated, I had a huge lead dust clean-up I had to do. I still worry about any residual lead carbonate that may be hiding in the walls.

The flight is uneventful--beautiful weather and no problem making my connections. Susan picked me up and we whisked away to the church. I can tell even before she opens the door that the place is rife with plaster dust and lead. We proceed inside and my worst anxieties are confirmed: the place is blanketed with black gunk from tons of ceiling plaster and "mud" that has let go due to a leaky roof. I do my own mental adjustments and decide, "Well as long as I don't eat anything contaminated, I can always clean just about anything when I get home." We forge on to the belfry.

I'm not thrilled by the first ladder that leads to the first landing of the belfry, but I go up without a hitch. We arrive at the first level, a twelve foot by twelve foot chamber with a few low windows and one solitary broken-out window about sixteen feet above the floor line. From this level, there is a second ladder that, like the first, goes up to the next level at a fairly steep angle in one straight shot. This ladder is the one that leads to the space where Susan thought we could put the camera obscura; however, this ladder goes up about thirty feet to a second level. The top of the ladder also does not extend past the opening and there is no grab-on of any kind. Looking up, I'm filled with fear and anxiety. I'm not even sure what I thought but it felt like the worst kind of bad dream, yet I knew I was awake. I will mention, I did climb the ladder to the top, but never alighted to the second landing.

It was clear, there was no way we were putting the camera up THERE. For one, neither of us would be able to negotiate the ladder and two, the space was far from street level. If we put the camera obscura up there, the image would be microscopic when viewed from below. After poking around the church for some other alternate space, we finally decided the only workable space was the solitary broken out window that was about sixteen feet above the first landing.

We spend Saturday cutting and placing mirrors to see if the system will work. The final test is a mirror that will have to hang over the opening that the first ladder goes through. We throw a heavy board over part of it and I balance with a small mirror to see if it works. It does.

Sunday we add a permanent ground glass to the camera, cut from an old plastic window from a storm door and then set to work figuring out how we are going to get the camera up into the window in a way that will stay. It becomes obvious we are unequipped to really do this. We borrow a 16' foot ladder but angled it doesn't reach. Then there is the question of how to attach the camera. Nail into the brick off a rickety ladder 16 feet above the floor?

We go to Home Depot to investigate our options. They can rent us a 24 foot ladder, but it's probably too big to negotiate through the alcove where the hole in the floor is. It's also extremely heavy: 62 pounds, about the weight of a small child. We find a 20 foot ladder for $89.00, but there is still question of what to do ON the ladder.

I decide the best way is to lift the camera somehow from the floor. Bessie is reasonably light and if we can get her mounted on the end of some kind of support, we can raise her into the window; however there are a few problems. For one the inside of the belfy is only twelve feet wide, a bit longer on the diagonal, so you can't just walk the support up. Secondly, the first level ladder is set in alcove, so a really long support can't be lifted in from ground level since it has to go at an angle and will pinch. The only answer is to make a folding support, which we do by using 5/8" carriage bolts and bolting together three one by sixes so they can fold up like the letter "N" and then unfold in the belfry. Clarinda uses her cell phone which has a calculator and I calculate that the support should be 17 feet long (Pythagorean Theorem). As a hedge, we make it 18 . With the camera attched, the whole business will be about twenty feet long.

We spend Sunday afternoon working on the tri-fold support, but also figuring out how to mount the camera a the top. Both Susan and I are worried about the shelf the camera is on breaking, so we reinforce the bottom of the camera by doubling the thickness of the bottom of the camera and using an additional wooden brace to supplement the two heavy "l" brackets that hold Bessie to the end of the fold-up support. At this point it's Sunday night and I've already missed my flight back to Philadelphia (it was clear this was going to happen and I made arrangements Saturday). Putting the shelf on and making sure it's strong enough, at the end of an exhausting day of running around seems like the last straw and I despair that the whole thing is going to be a supreme flop, but I forge on.

A big part of the anxiety of this whole gig was nearly all the responsibility for every sucess or failure, big or small, as well as what felt like people's safety felt like it was on my shoulders. We really had no support network. We had only a borrowed mini-van to fetch stuff and my carpentry skills are rather rusty having done relatively none since my theatre days, twenty five or so years ago. Susan has little to no construction experience, even though she's an architect.

At the end of the day, I pleaded with Susan that we need bodies if we are going to lift this beast into place. She got on the blower and enlisted the help of her friend Carol and got Clarinda to agree to come out early Monday. At this point it was really "now or never." Either we were going to raise the camera into place or create a supreme failure.

I slept well Sunday night, although I ended up waking up at 3 Am only to fall back asleep. I got up and made breakfast and my whole system was in a state of anxiety, including my stomach, gut, and bladder. We made one last trip to Home Desperate to get a piece of 1 x 3" stock to use as a stiffener, picked up Clarinda and arrived at the church right on schedule. I added some additional drywall screws into the bottom of the camera to make sure she wouldn't pull loose from the moorings, and added a large caster on her face, just above the lens so the camera wouldn't gall on the brick wall as we walked her up. Bessie looked like she was wearing a phylactory. We unfolded the support by propping up the camera end on a step ladder and I scabbed in the stiffener using drywall screws. Carol arrived around 9:40 but could not negotiate alighting from the ladder, primary out of fear. Eventually she conquered it and we proceeded to walk the contraption up.

I had to stand on a tall extension ladder holding and guiding the whole business. My knees shook from fear. The support groaned and could tell everyone was afraid it would snap. We maneuvered without a hitch, other than the last few inches as the camera approached the window (we built it with a three inch lip to catch the sill--a guess, but we guessed right) it was sliding on the edge of the lens. Luckily, I had the foresight to anticipate the possibility of the lens falling out and had permanent glued it solidly in with PVC cement.

Once the camera was in place, it was at too high an angle due to the support being too long. Clarinda, Carol and Susan held the support while I sawed it down to 17 feet. Voila! The camera was in. We ran some drywall screws into the floor and added some supports.

I said to Susan: "This feels like 12th century Christianity." She gave me a confused look and I thought maybe I had offended. I added, "terrible earthly toil, for a heavenly reward."