The Lake Hallstatt Pavilion (Inverted) began with the discovery of a modestly furnished wooden shed in the heart of the picturesque village of Hallstatt. This modest structure, which has a natural knothole in its front façade, was the catalyst for the idea of transforming a replica of this building into a camera obscura with the knothole as an opening. The camera obscura, a pre-photographic device for observation and perspective drawing, reverses the image it projects in a natural way. To repeat and confuse this inversion, the replica shed, built in collaboration with local artist and boat builder Wolfgang Müllegger, has also been inverted and now stands on its roof ridge. The projected image it creates on a ground glass pane inside – the lake and the salt mountain outside – is simultaneously inverted in relation to the landscape in front of it and correctly orientated in relation to the now inverted shed.
During their stay on the shores of Lake Hallstatt, near the historic rock salt loading harbour, the shed/camera obscura is used to create a large ‘salt print’ of this upside-down view. The first step in making a salt print is to soak paper in a concentrated salt solution, which in turn serves to activate the silver solution applied later, creating a light-sensitive surface of “silver salts”. This provisional image, produced according to a recipe for the production of photographic images developed in the 1830s by the pioneering photographer Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), combines its subject, the mountain of salt, with the means of its own production.
Art Your Village
This project deals with local identities, primarily within the smaller locations within the Salzkammergut region. International artists or artist groups engage with these locations and develop projects in the form of interventions over the course of the year.
More about the project at salzkammergut-2024.at
