Created by artist Annis Joslin in collaboration with Chahine Fellahi, this video work weaves together fragments of early films by the Hove Pioneers with newly captured footage recorded through a handmade cardboard camera obscura and transferred digitally.
The optical principle of the camera obscura – Latin for “dark chamber” – is often considered a precursor to photography and cinema, projecting an inverted image of the outside world through a small aperture. In Vision Chamber, past and present fold into one another as archival footage and new recordings intertwine, with gestures, movements, and objects echoing across distant times and spaces, drifting in and out of sync.
The work was presented as part of Play Back Forward, an exhibition held at Hove Museum from October 2025 to April 2026.
04mn42sec
4K video (colour), film digitised to HD video (black and white, silent)
A video created by artists Annis Joslin in collaboration with Chahine Fellahi
Films repurposed in this video work courtesy of Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton and BFI National Archive:
George Albert Smith and Laura Bayley:
Hanging Out the Clothes; or Master, Mistress and Maid 1 (1897)
The Miller and the Sweep (1897)
James Williamson:
Fire! (1901) [35mm tinted]
Stop Thief! (1901)
Flying the Foam and some Fancy Diving (1906)
