Camera Obscura International Project

The Camera Obscura International Project began in response to the global pandemic and its impact on photography and fine art students around the world. The project, first initiated by Ora Lev from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, invited students to convert their private spaces into camera obscura and document their experiences through photography.

Over the past year, we had to respond and adjust to the impacts of the global pandemic on our lives, social activities, movements and ways of working. Like many others around the world, we began to photograph and create in our immediate environments and even from our own homes. This major shift in perspective encouraged spending increasing time looking out the window, gazing at the world outside.

This project began in response to these new ways of seeing, this shared experience. Photography students from different countries around the world are invited to convert their rooms into camera obscura and document the projected view of the outside world. The Camera Obscura Project responds to the rooms we inhabit as a juxtaposition of worlds, as complex liminal spaces of the here and there.

Students' work was shared through weekly takeovers on a dedicated Instagram account since March 2021 (@camera.obscura.camera)