looking forward, to the upcoming 4th Pavlovka Pinhole Fest, I was asked to write something for their site. it’s online here, and i’ll clip the text below so you don’t have to click out:
To explain “why pinhole,” maybe it’s better first to ask “why photography,” since the means of production is secondary to any urge to make images in the first place. It’s a way to show the miracle of being in the world! But, if I choose some “off-normal,” unexpected technique, the focus so often shifts from the image seen, to process – how did you do that?
At its origin, for me, using cameras was as much about “paying attention in general” as it was about any image that remained. I used the tool I had, which had 35 mm film inside, and the lens that was there when it was loaned to me. I used that machine for a good long while, without trying others, learning how it saw. In some time, I started playing, testing other eyes. I noticed that different cameras see in their own ways. I started (mis)matching lenses and cameras that weren’t intended to be together, fishing for other realities.
Then, by accident, a new tool appeared. An even simpler eye, a camera with no lens.
I expected little. It was an experiment, but then – in what that box saw, I found unexpected surprises. Such a simple device, breathes differently than those complicated mechanical ones. Magic creeps in. And through it all, I try to stay open, paying attention, hoping I might be surprised.
About cameras (chambers, boxes): you can make one, easily. We have the ability to bend them to our will: form them so they might stretch reality, to try and fit some dream. In making our own cameras, we guess how they will see, but in practice, the box will often surprise us. In this tool-making craft there’s room for exacting number managers, mad poets, slow dreamers. We all follow the light, and it takes us somewhere. Sometimes familiar places, but often not.
In the end, is time – gathered, transformed. And shown! Pinhole cameras can do this in ways no other photographic approach does. And me, I still feel my way. Making, looking. Trying again. Chasing ghosts.