Magic in the Dark

Picturing Lea Hurst and Embley

These photographs show the places where Florence Nightingale grew up: Lea Hurst in Derbyshire, and Embley Park in Hampshire. They were taken using a walk-in camera obscura, creating images in a similar way to the Victorian pioneers of photography.

They were created by Simon Warner, assisted by the the students of Anthony Gell School, Wirksworth, near Lea Hurst, and the Hampshire Collegiate School at the Nightingales' second home, Embley Park.

In the spirit of the Victorian photographers Roger Fenton and James Robertson, who took some of the first images of war in the Crimea, Warner and his assistants worked inside a walk-in camera, which had to be assembled at each location. They exposed large, paper negatives by manually operating a shutter behind the lens.