Robyn Stacey’s Camera Obscura

The Camera Obscura is the earliest form of photography. A technique that mimics our own eyes, it captures a surrounding landscape and projects it upside down. It’s this form of visual projection that fascinates Robyn Stacey, who has just finished a three week haul in which she turned The Sofitel’s room 3907 on Collins Street, into a dark little nest for her own Camera Obscura project.

Robyn led us into her dark hotel room to show us the process: amongst the city’s monolithic buildings, cars, people and trams darted upside-down across the roof. Robyn finds that many become transfixed by the moving, aerial view of the city above them, a technique which has always inspired awe and interaction.

So despite not having photographed people for twenty years, the pieces Robyn is producing for the Sofitel’s program are a series of portraits. She felt drawn to how people seek to relax in the middle of cities that never do.

“The Sofitel was a good base because a hotel is such a transient place for people,” says Robyn. “Everyone you see around is waiting to go home, waiting to go to a party, waiting to meet others.”

From this idea the images she’s producing feature people in static poses with the distorted lines of the street’s urban landscape projected on to their body and surrounding walls.

Robyn is the Sofitel’s seventh Artist in Residency, an initiative started to further solidify the Sofitel’s role as Melbourne’s hotel for the arts. This has given Robyn a platform to turn her room into a view to weave the personalities of locals into the cityscape. The tangible result will be a collection of seamless, beautiful images which will return back to the hotel for an exhibition early next year.

To view more about Robyn Stacey, click here.

Robyn’s portrait taken my Leila Koren.