A BEGINNING

We have converted our car into a camera! It is now a travelling camera obscura and is employed by us to image our journey.

Pinhole devices and camera obscuras were once used by artists to capture quick and accurate sketches from life. Some camera obscuras were fitted into sedan chairs to enable a traveller's view to be recorded. Nearly two hundred years ago, on the invention of photography, the camera obscura was fitted with lenses and transformed into the devices that we are familiar with today.

For over ten years we have been working with pinhole and camera obscura imagery. An important notion in our activities has been the thought of linking of the pinhole device, or camera, to the subject photographed. A biscuit tin would record an afternoon tea party; a flowerpot would be used to image a garden. Blacking-out and converting the car seemed a logical way to image our journeys.

As we travel we photograph our experiences. The car was once just an observer of the landscape and our interaction photographing it. Now when we photograph, the car witnesses our tourist imaging activity and joins in photographing us. What it sees has previously gone unrecorded but now the car camera's pictures give us a new and unusual record.

The car and the road are the connecting agents that link our travel experience with sites visited across Australia. The car transports us physically and psychologically. And through its imaging capabilities the car camera connects us even more with our experiences of the road, the changes encountered with each turn of our journey.

Doug Spowart + Victoria Cooper