Seeing Vermeer

A video art homage to Johannes Vermeer and the camera obscura.

“By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon.” - Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol 6: Time Regained and A Guide to Proust

Compositionally, Vermeer’s “Woman With A Pearl Necklace” is a simple painting. Showing a woman in yellow staring into a mirror while putting on a pearl necklace, it is one of Gowing’s so-called “pearl pictures” — a set of mid-career Vermeer paintings with a similar composition. While it is easy to define this painting through the act of placing/wearing the necklace, it is the act of looking, of sight, which most animates this vignette. Between her self reflection and reflection lays the power of this piece, making it a far more conceptually abstract and modern painting than on first impression.

It feels fitting then, that any exploration of vision and modes of seeing in Vermeer’s work should include this particular painting. It has long been theorized that Vermeer used a camera obscura on his works; using it to perfect his signature approach to chiaroscuro. What this video series strives to imagine is a world where Vermeer used a different device or strategy to capture his images. Designed to be displayed on three screens, in each 15 to 60 second video we see “Woman With A Pearl Necklace” viewed through a different reflective material or optical technology. Some of these are contemporaneous to Vermeer, some are decidedly modern, but all provide a unique view onto the painting.