Jo Gane's obscura research

Helping a fellow artist master the camera obscura as a drawing device.

June 2019

Jo Gane’s practice has been centred on early photographic techniques, such as Daguerreotypes, and in 2019 she was “exploring links between early Photography and Drawing inspired by the work of Victorian painter Frederick Henry Henshaw and early photographer George Shaw.”

She asked to borrow the Birmingham Camera Obscura, which lives flatpacked in my shed, so we set it up along the River Cole where Henshaw and Shaw made work and she made some sketches of a bridge while I answered questions from confused dog walkers.

If you’re an artist who’s interested in using the camera obscura as a tool in your practice, get in touch and we’ll see if we can work something out.