Marja Pirilä

Interior/Exterior The camera obscura phenomenon, at once simple and magical, never ceases to fascinate me. I have worked with it intensely ever since 1996. For me camera obscura is a method by which to survey the living environment and mental landscapes, summoning subconscious feelings into the light of day. When the space transforms into a ”dark room” it conjures up the core and magic of photography again and again. That is when I feel most acutely that I am working with light. My idea in embarking on the "Interior/Exterior" project was a nocturnal inspiration: in a room converted into a camera obscura I could capture an image of a person and at the same time that person’s room and the view from the window – what an all-encompassing method by which to photograph a person’s living environment! The originally documentary idea soon expanded in a new direction. The pictures began to form not only a person’s living environment but also to constitute an excursion into the mental landscape: reflections of memories, reveries, fears and dreams. Working on this series was for me like taking photographs for a family album: visitations to people and also to myself. To take the pictures I transform people’s rooms into camera obscura by covering the windows of the room with blackout plastic and placing on top of the hole cut in it a simple convex lens. Then the view outside the window is reflected upside down into the room forming a dreamy layered space. This and the occupant of the room I then photographed with a conventional camera. "Interior/Exterior" is the most extensive and long-lasting project accomplished with the camera obscura method. So far I have photographed this series in Finland, Norway, Italy and France, and the work continues.