Collaborative artists Anna Heinrich and Leon Palmer have created a way to view a beautiful landscape as if you were standing inside a camera. To accomplish this, they’ve submerged a camera obscura—an optical device that consists of a room with a hole in one side—into the ground. What results is an immersive experience that reflects the outdoors into the interior space, mimicking how the image would enter a photographic device.
Heinrich and Palmer call their site-specific installation The Reveal, which features an 11.5-foot Weholite pipe embedded into the side of a hill in Hadleigh Country Park in Essex, England. Clad in a durable oak with an ash-lined interior, it has a lens fixed within the door to produce the image projection. When the door is shut tight, a vibrant outdoor scene is revealed on the inside of the back wall. The awe-inspiring view overlooks the land's rolling hills and resembles a constantly-moving painting.
The Reveal seats four or five people at a time and is accessible via a path in the park. Large enough to accommodate wheelchairs, it invites everyone to sit and experience the world in an unexpected way.
