magic lanterns

Through the university archivist I was introduced to Trevor and his collection of magic lanterns in Hove.  I was interested in these because they were an early way of projecting light images, which is what in a very simple way I have been doing in my work.  Trevor showed his collection which ranges from the earliest and simplest candle lanterns to the most sophisticated which can overlay up to 3 images at a time.  He then gave a slide show.  Some of the points I noted:

• A magic lantern has three basic components: a source of light, a slide with an image on it and a lens whose curvature enlarges the image.
• We tend to think of lanterns as a Victorian phenomenon that was quickly superceded by cinema, but in fact they were developed in the mid 17th century and carried on being quite commonly used until the mid 20th.
• The slides, which are less than 3" in size, were initially hand-painted with varying degrees of skill, but later had photographs printed or impressed on them.
• The projected colours are vivid and the luminosity creates great depth to the image by comparison with say a painting.
• Slides were used in a different way to movies. They often had a religious, travel or scientific content and so were used educationally.  There was also a strong performance element, a relationship between the person showing the slides and the content (talking, perhaps shocking or frightening, making sounds).
• 2 or 3 slides could be made to interact to create the illusion of movement.  I found this particularly interesting in relation to my own work in the case of slides with geometric patterns which in interaction created a kaleidoscopic effect.

• Children often had their own magic lantern.
• The 19th century slides reflect their time and contain a lot of racism, cruelty to children and animals.

Source of slides: www.slides.uni-trier.de

Seeing the lanterns suggested the idea to me of adding a simple form to the areas of light I had been projecting on to tracing paper, which added to the