Available from our Private Collections Salon & Sale, this exquisite unique photograph by Vera Lutter is part of her Venice project, made across four visits to Venice between 2005 and 2008. Lutter works exclusively with room-sized camera obscuras of her own construction. She uses spaces such as an apartment or shipping container and blacks everything out except for a single small aperture through which light from the outside world projects an inverted image onto the opposite wall. She lines the wall with sheets of silver gelatin paper and lets the exposure run anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, depending on the site and the conditions. The sheet that comes out of the camera is the finished work, a unique negative print in which tonal values are reversed from the world it recorded. Lutter’s slow and deliberate process establishes a sense of stillness while simultaneously registering the passage of time and the subtle transformations of the environments within each image.
Vera Lutter with her room sized camera obscura courtesy of LACMA
