Art Installations

Richard Torchia: Daylights

Installation artist Richard Torchia presents Daylights, a series of camera obscura projections and other "interventions" at Eastern State Penitentiary.

Daylights is composed of pieces ranging from large-scale optical works to more ephemeral, performative gestures. Many of the pieces exploit the similarities between the Penitentiary's cells and primitive cameras. One projection uses the existing peephole of a closed cell door as a photographic pinhole to throw a live image of its illuminated interior into the corridor. Another work employs shifting depth of focus to optically dissolve the heavy iron grill work over a cell window, creating the appearance of an unobstructed view of the foliage in the Penitentiary yard.

"I am particularly interested in the way lenses and pinholes demonstrate the image-bearing capacity of light, transforming the abstract illumination falling into the cells from the prison skylights (called 'eyes of God,' or 'dead eyes') into representations of clouds, birds and the wandering arc of the sun." said Mr. Torchia. "Because the projections are live, they also address the perception of time, reconciling what Michel Foucault called the 'hell of anticipation' experienced by inmates, with the more hopeful expectation available to viewers of camera obscura projections."

Mr. Torchia began working with the camera obscura in 1990 as an extension on earlier experimentation with the photocopier. Recent projections in Philadelphia include exhibitions at the ICA and the Schmidt/Dean Gallery, and the installation of a pair of camera obscuras on a historic SEPTA trolley last December. In addition to a solo exhibition at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona (Tucson) in March of this year, he recently developed projections for a shipping container in the port of Copenhagen and the Emerald Room of New York City's Gramercy Hotel. His billboard-scale projection of the Norwich Cathedral, England, is on view at the city's School of Art and Design through August 30. In 1994 Mr. Torchia was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and in 1995 a National Endowment for the Arts/ MidAtlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship in photography. Mr. Torchia will have lived within sight of the Penitentiary's massive front walls for twelve years in September.