Auto-Portrait Photowall -National Festival of Making 2025
This year we brought our Obscura Photowall Installation to the National Festival of Making 2025 weekend, inviting festival goers to produce their own self portraits. The process involved using a large-format victorian-esc analogue camera with a shutter release cable, which when squeezed in a single brilliant flash of light, the moment is captured onto the silver emulsion.
Our aim was to produce a 'self-authored' archive of the 2025 festival weekend, and over the course of two days we helped facilitate over 300 people to produce their own analogue 'selfies'.
©Fiona Finchett
©Fiona Finchett
Once the self-portraits had been taken, they're processed on location in a pop-up darkroom and added to the growing Photowall exhibition, with a 30 minute turnaround. Festival goers could then use a mobile app to re-invert these negative portraits, seeing them as black & white portraits.
©Fiona Finchett
Historically the photographic process creates a power dynamic between photographer & sitter. We’re seeking to challenge this by returning power back to the sitter, giving them authorship over the process through ‘Auto-Portraiture’.
By using a long cable release to activate the camera, it allows the sitter to be both the photographer & the photographed, creating a series of assisted self-portraits, giving them the final decision over which moment is captured.
Commission Us!
The Obscura Auto-Portrait Photowall is available for commissions at festivals and events.
For enquiries please reach out at orrinsaintpierre@gmail.com