Canadian photographer Donald Lawrence talks about his Underwater Pinhole Photography Project, the forthcoming Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival in the Yukon, and other works that combine his interests in wilderness experience, art-making, early optical history, and the relationship between learning and play. Following the auditorium lecture, join Lawrence in the Palace Courtyard for a demonstration of how he builds camera obscuras. The event is free with admission; Sundays free to NM residents.
One of Lawrence’s Rube Goldberg-style underwater cameras is featured in the ehxibit Poetics of Light: Pinhole Photography on exhibit in the museum’s Herzstein Gallery. Download a high-resolution version of one of his images by clicking on "Go to related images," below.
Lawrence teaches in the visual arts program at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, Canada. Through gallery and landscape-based projects his artistic practice explores the meeting place of urban and wilderness culture. Such projects as Kayak/Camera-Obscura and the Underwater Pinhole Photography Project relate his interests in sea kayaking and the ocean environment to a long-standing fascination with pre-photographic optical apparatuses. In addition to his studio and teaching practices Lawrence engages in a range of publication and conference activities and is the lead researcher of the SSHRC-funded Camera Obscura Project, which wil invite an international group of artists and researchers to experience the Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival in Dawson City, Yukon, around summer solstice, 2015.
Learn more about the Underwater Pinhole Photography Project by clicking here: http://www.donaldlawrence.ca/underwaterpinhole.html
