Dark Mirror | Carl Warner

Dark Mirror | Carl Warner

2 - 26 May, 2018

In the Eighteenth century it was the height of fashion for tourists to venture out into a landscape turn their back to the scene and view it in a dark pocket mirror known as a Claude glass.

Nature was better understood as a picture, a thing to be defined, shaped and limited by technology. The convex mirror brought a whole vista into view, the darkened tint reduced the light to the tones of paint and moving the mirror shaped the landscape allowing the particular arrangement of formations that made a picture to the liking of the observer.

The diversion was so popular that guidebooks gave stations, places from which the best view could be obtained, including one in the middle of a lake. The painter John Glover brought his Claude glass with him when he moved to Van Diemen's Land to assist in seeing and transcribing the Australian scene.

What was an Arcadian filter when used in Britain was a European filter in Australia, a look back to a time before. Use of the Claude glass fell away and it is little known now, but we still turn to and from nature using tools to alter it to our liking. A smart phone is almost the same size as a Claude glass and the darkened screen can act as a similar mirror and our touristic impulses to see a scene ‘at its best’ are unchanged.

I went on my own tour to the ruins of Port Arthur and the splendor of the Pieman river in Tasmania with thoughts of the glass and an interest in how we, as a species, attempt to set ourselves outside of the natural. We constantly turn to and away from nature confusing the real with the ideal, thinking of how it should be rather than as it is.