A Treatise on the Camera Obscured

A Treatise on the Camera Obscured documents an odd, low-tech act of resistance to post-9/11 photography restrictions: rather than photograph banks, transit hubs, and communications infrastructure outright, Bush built a portable camera obscura from a magnifying glass, a mirror, and plywood, then used it as a drawing aid at sites where photography was informally or formally discouraged. The book interleaves an account of London's post-9/11 security apparatus with a short history of the camera obscura, a step-by-step record of building the device, and the drawings produced with it. A slim, text-heavy, Blurb-format paperback with black-and-white reproductions, it treats the camera obscura as a way to sidestep, and quietly comment on, the arbitrary policing of who is allowed to look at what. Bush is a British photographer, writer, and researcher whose broader practice examines forms of invisible institutional power, and this project sits alongside his other self-published work on surveillance and state authority.