The 150th anniversary of the opening of the spectacular, domed
Leeds Corn Exchange building was celebrated this weekend with a series of events highlighting the structure's Victorian heritage. An art installation featured contemporary works related to Leeds' industrial history. In a quirky re-purposed storefront, Victorian-era taxidermy from the city's art collection was on display. Musicians performed and gin and tonics were sold from a temporary bar.
The best part of the event was the series of optical projects set up by
Simon Warner, a local artist. On the stone landing in front of the Corn Exchange, visitors could step inside a camera obscura and view a projected image of the brick and terra-cotta storefronts of Boar Lane. Simon presented a slideshow about the immersive, large-scale panoramas of the era, which, accessed via a central spiral staircase, would have offered patrons the full-circle visual experience of standing in a distant landscape or amid the chaos of a significant battle of the era. He also described, and demonstrated, the phenomenon of double-image dioramas: large landscape paintings that could both be viewed normally and be illuminated from behind to reveal an alternate double image. At their popular peak, these images would have been presented in a darkened theatre, with stage hands using the play of light and music to dramatically transform an image, for example, from peaceful Pompeii to a volcanic maelstrom.
Simon also brought equipment to create traditional silhouette portraits; this art form was an inexpensive and popular form of portraiture before the advent of photography. Kelly and I traced each other's shadowed outlines: this was accomplished quickly and accurately using an arrangement of a bright light, a well-positioned human subject, a pane of plexiglass, and a sheet of translucent paper. We reduced and transferred these tracings onto black matte paper using a mechanical
pantograph. The resulting silhouettes were remarkable!
