Camera Cubica

In the era of digital photography, few people now know what a “pinhole” is, that tiny slit through which the plate of photographic cameras was imaged before the introduction of the lens lens. The pinhole leads to the origin of photography, to the “camera obscura”, when photos taken quickly with digital cameras and cell phones did not exist. The “Cubic Room” project by Nicolò Degiorgis for the Garutti Cube was born with the intention of rediscovering this ancient technique, now forgotten.

But not only that: with his work Degiorgis, an artist photographer of Bolzano origin, aims to “rediscover” the architecture of the Piccolo Museion - Cubo Garutti located in the Don Bosco district of Bolzano, which this year celebrates ten years since its “birth”. Attentive to capture the characteristics and dynamics of a specific social and public space through photography, to unite these two rediscoveries Nicolò Degiorgis used the architecture of the Garutti Cube and transformed it for the occasion into a large photographic device, the camera obscura, located in the public space.

The artist then invited the inhabitants of the neighborhood to take images from the Cube-machine and therefore participate in a little magic. The images that emerged represent the surrounding neighborhood, its architecture, the urban space and its inhabitants. The reality that filters through the small diameter of the pinhole, however, is an upside-down reality, seen in a different way: no longer as the neighborhood sees the Garutti Cube, but as the Garutti Cube sees the neighborhood and its inhabitants.

“All those who”, as Alberto Garutti’s phrase placed on the wall of the Cube states, “passing through there” stopped to look at the Cube, had the opportunity to be photographed and photograph themselves with the Cube Camera, leading to community participation in the neighborhood.”