Tower Obscura 3 - Sun Up -

Felix Green - 2012

Tower Obscura 1 - Sun-up montage with hand - Felix Green - 2012

Pinhole Lens on Minolta Camera - Felix Green - 2013

Pinhole Exposure 2 (with sheet)- Felix Green - 2012

Tower Obscura 5 montage - Felix Green - 2012

Pinhole Exposure 1 - Felix Green - 2012

Tower Obscura 4 (Sunrise with drawing on acetate) -

Felix Green - 2012

Pinhole Exposure 3 (with woman on acetate) - Felix Green - 2012

Tower Obscura 2- Flagpole with Beach - Felix Green - 2012

I took all but one of these photographs while on a residency with two friends – Hermione Pilkington and Tallulah Brown - in ‘The South Lookout Tower’ in Aldeburgh Suffolk in 2012. We called the project ‘You Needed the Sea’.

 

The ‘Tower Obscura’ images were all made by turning the middle section of the former lifeguard’s tower (a small room accessed by a ladder from the ground floor) into a camera obscura that faced the North Sea. I would wake up in time for the sunrise, and hold or tape photographic paper against the wall on which the inverted image was projected for between 1 and 5 minutes, depending on the strength of the light. I would then develop the photographs on-the-spot as the room doubled as a dark room. Tallulah and Hermione sketched and traced line drawings on acetate while they wrote and made artworks of their own.

The ‘Pinhole Exposure’ images were taken with a pinhole camera made from of a shoebox. These were also exposed in the tower/darkroom.

 

The colour image of the horizon was taken by adapting the lens cap on my old Minolta film camera into a pinhole lens. It was taken at some point in the year after the residency.

 

It was a magical and deeply peaceful week spent with good friends, it’s been nice to return to these images again.

 

Felix Green 2020.

 

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