Haunted Nature: On the shed’s architecture, “the natural” and ghosts through the Camera Obscura’s pinhole.
Concept and text by Dr Gil Mualem-Doron.
A project by Sussex BPOC Photography Collective in response to the South Downs history of the Victorian amusement park at Devil’s Dyke at Smart Sheds.
Free tickets can be booked here: https://www.brightonfringe.org/events/smart-sheds/
‘Contrary to what we might believe, the experience of ghosts is not tied to a bygone
historical period, like the landscape of Scottish manors, etc., but on the contrary, is
accentuated, accelerated, by modern technologies like film, television, the telephone.
These technologies inhabit, as it were, a phantom structure. . . . When the very
first perception of an image is linked to a structure of reproduction, then we are dealing
with the realm of phantoms.’ JACQUES DERRIDA, The Ghost Dance (1989)
For centuries, ghosts have been spotted on Sussex’s Downs. This is due to a natural phenomenon that occurs on foggy days when a hiker's shadow is cast on the fog, creating the illusion of a ghostly presence haunting the startled walker. While there is a natural cause for the appearances of ghosts on the Downs, “Nature” and “Natural” are much more complex aspects of the place.
The South Downs, while a beautiful and diverse landscape, is not entirely "natural" as it has been shaped by human activities over millennia, particularly in agriculture and forestry. At the Smart Sheds site, the “natural” landscape has been transformed and still contains remnants of the Victorian playground built in 1891 by James Henry Hubbard, a mixed-race son of enslaved Virginians who were freed.
As its name suggests, the Victorian amusement park was a controlled form of nature, offering elaborate landscaping that combined spectacle with order. In other words, a nature that was transformed into a simulated experience of danger (e.g., scenic railways, haunted houses, Camera Obscura) while maintaining safety.
It is worth noting that Victorian amusement parks were deeply intertwined with colonial imagery, reflecting the imperial mindset of the 19th century. These parks not only entertained but also reinforced ideas of empire, exoticism, and Western superiority through themed attractions, human exhibits, and simulated colonial landscapes.
The (artificial) construction of “Nature” and the exclusions that these parks entail are also echoed in the concept of the primitive hut or the shed. The primitive hut is traditionally considered the archetypal form from which architecture originates, symbolising a return to simplicity and a direct connection with nature. However, in his book The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida's Haunt, the architectural theoretician Mark Wigley argued that even this elemental structure is imbued with cultural and philosophical complexities, indicating that the idea of a pure architectural origin is a constructed narrative.
He proposes that architectural spaces are inherently haunted by the traces of their histories and the absence of what once was or what could have been. Similarly to the concept of nature, the hut, in its simplicity and presumed authenticity, becomes a canvas where these spectral presences are more acutely felt, embodying the tension between presence and absence.
These conceptions informed the BPOC Photography Collective's interventions at the Sheds site. The interventions will include the construction of a Camera Obscura on the scale of an entire room, in one of the sheds, reminiscent of the one that was part of Devil’s Dyke Victorian Amusement Park. The Camera Obscura will be used for a photoshoot with the visitors or can be used by the visitors themselves. The light passing through the small hole will project the image of the Down’s landscape and the visitors outside the room onto the surfaces facing the hole inside the shed. Since light travels in a straight line through the hole, the projected image will appear to be flipped upside down and inverted. Images in a camera obscura also appear blurred or ghostly due to several factors related to the way light interacts with the small aperture (or pinhole) and the camera's design.
It is not just ghostly images that the Camera Obscura creates. It de facto captures ghosts. It shows images of things that are no longer there. In the time it takes for light to travel and form the projected image on the wall, the source object is no longer there or at least not as it was when the light left it..
But the view from within the Camera Obscura is more radical than that. Unlike the camera that captures and freezes time in the printed photograph, the Camera Obscura is a live show. A live broadcast that cannot be recorded. Therefore, the camera obscura, like the ghost, does not represent death, but rather something intensely human. It represents desire. A presence that defies death and places us in a limbo or at the doors between death and life. Doors are often perceived as portals for ghosts. And hearing the living room door shut just now, even though there is not even a hint of wind in the house, it reminds me that the shutting of doors is one of the favourite ways spirits announce their presence. Sometimes, opening and shutting doors is the only way to remind us what we shouldn’t have forgotten. A door - as an invitation.
‘It’s the door, and beyond it is the paradise of the heart. Our things—and everything is ours—are interchangeable. And the door is a door, the door of metonymy, the door of legend. A door to keep September gentle. A door that invites fields to begin their wheat. The door has no door, yet I can go into my outside and love both what I see and what I do not see. All of these wonders and beauty are on earth—there—and yet the door has no door? My prison cell accepts no light except into myself. Peace be unto me. Peace be unto the sound barrier. I wrote ten poems to eulogize my freedom, here and there. I love the particles of sky that slip through the skylight— a meter of light where horses swim. And I love my mother’s little things, the aroma of coffee in her dress when she opens the door of day to her flocks of hens. I love the fields between Autumn and Winter, the children of our prison guard, and the magazines displayed on a distant sidewalk. I also wrote twenty satiric poems about the place in which we have no place. My freedom is not to be as they want me to be, but to enlarge my prison cell, and carry on my song of the door. A door is a door, yet I can walk out within me, and so on and so forth.’ [Mahmoud Darwish, One square meter of prison, 1967 / Eng. 2002].
Another door that this Camera Obscura opens, via the soundtrack played in the shed, is to the previous project by the BPOC Photography Collective that was created in Devil’s Dyke. In that project, “Outlooks on the English Countryside”, we, a group of BPOC men, went on a photography hike in Devil’s Dyke and produced a series of photographs and a photography installation that addressed our feelings and lived experience of the English Countryside. The photography installation featured a mash-up soundtrack of the songs "Jerusalem" by William Blake and "Redemption Song" by Bob Marley, which, together with an hour-long conversation, is part of the Smart Sheds’ Camera Obscura art project.
The project was created by members of the BPOC Photography Collective, including Denis Njouwouo, Kevin Prince, Edi Mandala, Matheus deSimone, Nick Ford, Pierre Monnerville and curated by Dr Gil Mualem-Doron. More about it can be found here: https://www.seas-uk.org/englishcountryside or by scanning the QR Code.
