Vera Lutter’s Pinhole Camera

Probably the most obviously fascinating part of Vera Lutter’s work using the camera obscura is the fact that it’s practically life-sized when you first see a print. Her method of turning an entire room in her apartment/flat into the camera obscura means that when the printed image is developed, it’s likely to be just about the same size as you would perceive it had you yourself been looking out of her camera. I think I’ve often discussed how the camera is used to deceive and how different photography techniques have been developed to change or influence our perception of a situation through a photograph, but I feel like Lutter’s technique is actually several steps in the other direction. It seems as if the/her pinhole camera is intended to give her audience an almost exact replica image of what she can see from her room.

That brings me to the second point, however, that it’s important to note from where she takes the picture. Of course, different windows all have different levels of lighting and different views of certain monuments. If anything, as the reading alludes to, the picture is giving us a lot more information about her room (which she turned into a camera obscura) than it is about the subject (matter?) itself. With some knowledge of the relative size of what’s in the picture, you can gauge and infer a lot about the position of her room, its distance from the monument itself, and much more, which is a super interesting part of her work.