Seeing Stars
PINHOLE STAR PROJECTOR EXPLORING LIGHT AND OPTICS, 2003
Dianne Bos (CA)
Using a pinhole camera — one of the simplest image-creating technologies — this installation demonstrates how light passing through tiny holes into a dark space projects an image.
A pinhole camera is a simple light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from outside passes through this single opening and projects an upside-down image onto the opposite side of the box. In the human eye, light shines through the cornea, which focuses images onto the retina, just as light through a lens projects an image onto film.
Seeing Stars expands on the single-lens image we are used to seeing with our eyes. The multiple pinhole ‘lenses’ project a galaxy-shaped cluster of lights onto ground glass. We recognise a starry pattern at first, but upon closer examination, we can see that each star is in fact a tiny image of what’s on the opposite side of the device — in this case, a light bulb. Each view differs slightly depending on where the aperture is located within the overall star pattern.
BIO
Dianne Bos was born in Hamilton, Ontario in Canada, and received her B.F.A. from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. She currently divides her time between the foothills of the Rockies and the Pyrenees. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally in numerous group and solo exhibitions since 1981. Recent important national exhibitions of Dianne’s work include: Light Echo at the McMaster Museum of Art, in collaboration with Astronomer Doug Welch, which linked celestial and earthly history; and Reading Room at the Cambridge Galleries, an exhibition exploring the book as a camera. Her work is currently part of the exhibition Poetics of Light: Contemporary Pinhole Photography, at the New Mexico History Museum. Her recent exhibitions include See Attached, a photographic dialogue with photographer Sarah Fuller; and THE SLEEPING GREEN: No Man's Land 100 Years Later, unique images inspired by World War 1 Canadian battlefields.