Marian Roth has been making images for the past 35 years in the natural world of her village in Provincetown. Most recently the work she produces is made exclusively inside the cameras she has made and inhabits. Instead of photographing onto paper negatives from the camera obscura, she photographs the actual projected image, capturing light and time.
Roth’s series, The Mysterious World of the Camera Obscura, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography on September 8th through October 2, 2016. Also starting on September 8th, will be the installation of Roth’s camera obscura in the Griffin gallery. The installation will be up throughout the exhibition. The public is invited to observe the installation on September 8th beginning at noon. An opening reception will be held at the Griffin Museum on Thursday, September 15, 2016 from 5pm to 6:30pm. Marian Roth will give a talk on September 15, 2016 from 6:30 to 8pm. An RSVP is required. All of the events listed above are part of the Somerville Toy Camera Festival.
“As a visual artist obsessed with time and light, working inside a camera obscura is a magical experience for me: sitting in the darkness, letting light in through apertures I have cut out of tarpaper, arranging and re-arranging focal planes, waiting until something mysterious happens.” Says Roth. “ And if I can’t have my darkroom anymore, the camera obscura, with its tiny slits of light, is a wonder-filled cave to explore,” she said.
Marian Roth is a self-taught photographer and visual artist who has been working with the camera obscura imagery for the past three decades. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Mass Cultural Council Fellowship, and this past year has been working with a fellowship from the Pollock Krasner Foundation. Marian has also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.