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Description
Camera Obscura:

The ancestor of the modern photographic camera. In Latin, it means "a chamber of darkness." A camera obscura is a room of total darkness - breached only by a tiny pinhole of light.

In the labyrinthine streets of the City, in one overhanging 12th floor tenament in the district of S----, there lived a man who lived out his days in a camera obscura.

Behind the room's barred doors was a tiny apartment, spartan in its appointments but a chaotic wunderkammer of strange devices, arcane texts, and photographs which blanketed every surface, their subjects indiscernable. This was the atelier of Henri D'Aquin, once a reknowned photographer, now a hermit living out the last of his days.

The pinhole itself, made from a tiny crack in the window, was channeled all throughout the room by an elaborate series of glass prisms, at the center of which was a perfect recreation of the hexagram of Solomon. At its center was an ancient photograph containing the last remaining photograph of his love, a woman whom he called Black Maria.

His daily ritual was to photograph this diffracted light, which according to his volumes of research in celestial photography should reveal an image of her spirit. He stood behind the black hood of the camera, in the same spot where he had taken his first picture of her. He developed the photographs in the porcelain bath where she had once laid. He would compare the developed plates in the waning light of the lamp that held vigil over her sickbed. In this way he would relive the fleeting memories of his short experience with her, to prove her existence to the world...and to himself.

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This is a background for a story I have had for some time. I will put up the finished version of the short story when it has done. This project has been envisioned in many possible forms and media.

Description
Camera Obscura:

The ancestor of the modern photographic camera. In Latin, it means "a chamber of darkness." A camera obscura is a room of total darkness - breached only by a tiny pinhole of light.

In the labyrinthine streets of the City, in one overhanging 12th floor tenament in the district of S----, there lived a man who lived out his days in a camera obscura.

Behind the room's barred doors was a tiny apartment, spartan in its appointments but a chaotic wunderkammer of strange devices, arcane texts, and photographs which blanketed every surface, their subjects indiscernable. This was the atelier of Henri D'Aquin, once a reknowned photographer, now a hermit living out the last of his days.

The pinhole itself, made from a tiny crack in the window, was channeled all throughout the room by an elaborate series of glass prisms, at the center of which was a perfect recreation of the hexagram of Solomon. At its center was an ancient photograph containing the last remaining photograph of his love, a woman whom he called Black Maria.

His daily ritual was to photograph this diffracted light, which according to his volumes of research in celestial photography should reveal an image of her spirit. He stood behind the black hood of the camera, in the same spot where he had taken his first picture of her. He developed the photographs in the porcelain bath where she had once laid. He would compare the developed plates in the waning light of the lamp that held vigil over her sickbed. In this way he would relive the fleeting memories of his short experience with her, to prove her existence to the world...and to himself.

-------------------------

This is a background for a story I have had for some time. I will put up the finished version of the short story when it has done. This project has been envisioned in many possible forms and media.