Camera Obscura Today – Art, Education and Photo Projects

The camera obscura—literally “dark chamber”—is one of the oldest optical inventions in human history. Described during the Renaissance and later foundational to the earliest photographs, it still matters in the smartphone age. In fact, it’s more relevant than ever.

Camera Obscura in Contemporary Art

Artists value the medium’s slowness and serendipity. Weeks- or months-long pinhole exposures produce solargraphs that trace the sun’s path, turning time itself into an image. Our project The 7th Day invites people worldwide to place simple pinhole cameras; returned results become part of a growing archive—a collective artwork about time and light.

Camera Obscura in Education

In classrooms and workshops, building a pinhole camera with simple materials reveals how light forms images. For many young makers it’s a first encounter with analog photography—sparking curiosity and bridging science and art.

The Millennium Camera – Photographing the Next 1,000 Years

A striking contemporary example is artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats’s Millennium Camera: a radically durable pinhole camera that exposes a single image over roughly a millennium to register landscape change.

• In 2015, the ASU Art Museum in Tempe, Arizona, installed a Millennium Camera slated to be unveiled in 3015, aimed at the city skyline to condense a thousand years of urban transformation into one photograph. (news.asu.edu, Atlas Obscura, PetaPixel)
• In 2024, another Millennium Camera was sited in Tucson (Tumamoc Hill) with University of Arizona collaborators. Light passes through a pin-sized hole in 24-karat gold into a copper cylinder, gradually fading layered rose-madder oil pigments to form an image—meant to be opened about a thousand years from now. (University of Arizona News, New Atlas, Smithsonian Magazine)
• Coverage by outlets such as Hyperallergic frames the project as the world’s slowest photograph and a prompt to consider our responsibilities to future generations. (Hyperallergic, aau.edu)

Together, these works show how the camera obscura operates today as art, inquiry, and civic imagination.

Camera Obscura as a Source of Inspiration

Even in the age of smartphones, the camera obscura reminds us that photography exceeds technique. It’s an exploration of light, time, and perception—from art history and creative projects to playful experiments for kids.

For further context on ultra-long exposures and what’s been achieved to date, see documented records of years-long pinhole photographs. (National Geographic, My Modern Met)

Art Project “Camera Obscura 2005/1–∞”
A compelling net-art initiative is Camera Obscura 2005/1–∞, launched in 2005 by Przemek Zajfert and Burkhard Walter and dedicated to Roman Opałka. It uses a twin-pinhole camera: each week the two “holes” were auctioned on eBay; the highest bidders received the same camera loaded with 5×7-inch film, pierced their pinhole with a supplied needle, made an exposure, and passed the camera on. Because the two openings are very close together, the two exposures partially overlap, forming a joint image created by people in different places—a global puzzle of parallel exposures. The series is documented online and intended for physical display as well. Project site: http://www.camera-obscura-1-inf.net.

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Far from obsolete, the camera obscura bridges past and present. Its simplicity makes it accessible; its results continue to surprise. And with visionary efforts like the Millennium Camera, the medium looks boldly toward the year 3015 and beyond. (Hyperallergic)