... Vera Lutter has revived and modified the camera obscura in unusual and intriguing ways. At the time of the Renaissance a typical camera obscura was room size. In the eighteenth century it was the size of a sedan chair, while in the nineteenth century it shrank to the size of a packing box. In sharp contrast, Lutter’s camera obscura of choice is the size of a shipping container. (In fact, it often is a shipping container.) Her work is also differentiated from her predecessors’ in that she prints extremely large, sometimes wall-size images as the end product. The photographic images are exposed over several hours or even months, capturing traces of movement and creating a ghostly sense of temporality. Vera Lutter’s work has not only revived the camera obscura but also reinvented photography itself, creating a new sensitivity to both time and space...
