Obscure Camera is a trifocal projects installation that explores different ways of seeing and, more precisely, various ways we have come to represent the experience of sight in visual mediums; beginning with drawing, the photographic record, moving image films and on to the most recent experimentation with digital animations.

Our own experiences in looking at early photography coupled with current explorations with digital mediums and our interpretations of critical writings on the visual experience, like Berger’s "Ways of Seeing," have all contributed to trifocal projects’ interest in exploring ideas related to visual history. Obscure Camera attempts to span the gaps in time, technology and style represented in the transition from drawing and static photography through moving images, culminating with the digitally created images of present time.

The installation combines the photographic technology of the traditional 8x10 Box Camera and the modern laptop computer with its Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). The blending of these two technologies into an “obscure camera” enables the audience/participant to see how a charcoal rendering of what is now considered to be the earliest known photograph by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (View from the Window at Le Gras, c. 1826) interact with video footage, digital still images, computer animations, and live input from the immediate surroundings. The resulting encounter with Obscure Camera accentuates our recent history of representing, capturing, or creating the visual experience and enables the audience to see various “ways of seeing” intersect with one another.