Russian Artist Crafts Eye-Catching Simple Wooden Cameras

Reuters
By Reuters
August 21, 2018World News
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A Russian artist is going back to the roots of photography, creating eye-catching wooden cameras based on the basic principles of the artform and attracting buyers from around the world.

Sergei Lebedev’s work, which includes both the cameras themselves and the unusual photographs he creates, is now on show at an exhibition in his native region of Kaliningrad. The unique cameras average at $150 each.

“This is the simplest principle of cameras and the way in which photography began, the way the first cameras were born. Essentially, they were simple wooden boxes. So, if we look inside these cameras, we will see that these are ordinary wooden boxes, in which light doesn’t penetrate. Light penetrates through a small hole, made with a needle. This is all that is needed in order to get an image on the film” said Lededev.

The former factory worker combines his love for woodwork and photography, using driftwood, pebbles and shells as materials to create his work, and combing the shorelines of his home for parts of fallen trees, naturally polished by the sea’s waves.

From there, he cuts out ‘a simple wooden box’, into which light doesn’t penetrate. It passes only through a small hole made with a needle, Lebedev following the simplest principle of camera making, used at the earliest stages of the development of photography.

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