Mar 3, 2021 | Blog
At first it was wonderful to just meet Gio (John) Apruzzese, and to know there was another human close by in this deserted lonely town. I was curious about his writing. He was very easy to talk to and the books in Lo Studio provided fodder for our talk. Turns out Gio can write and does mostly at night. I am a morning person, up with the light, looking to shoot. That was the perfect arrangement, for two people experiencing Civita at the same time. We would meet up for dinner, the end of my day, the beginning of his. And talk we would with good food and wine.
After the fellowship Gio connected me with an artist in Lodz, Poland, Bronka Nowicka with whom he had worked and after seeing my work, she wrote a piece on photography and on Gio’s poems along with her personal history of photography and time and suggested that we collaborate. You could not avoid the idea of time when in Civita surrounded by the ghosts who woke me up at night, trodding the cobblestones. Perfect for the pandemic we wove our thoughts together swerving and darting and bouncing around. Heartfelt emails passed between us while alone. I looked forward to what Gio and Bronka had to say.
Spo-tkanie or
We-aving was published recently in
Powidoki, (Afterimage), an art and science journal from the Strzeminski Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz. Here is a link that describes the journal:
https://powidoki.asp.lodz.pl/o-nas. This is the link to the text and images in Powidok:
https://jpapruzzese.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Bronka_Nowicka_Powidoki-nr.4_v1-1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR12ksU7T–rRQFjQy4pby_4adcqecGgGvQu8_V9Gu9zNQGCajOZk73aniYAs always thank you for reading this post. This is an excellent addition to my fellowship. I am grateful.
Jan 23, 2021 | Blog
I am a lucky person. Mostly. Since the pandemic began, I have been staying home, like most people and as most of you know, I shattered the femur in my right leg, August 24th. It took almost four months for that to heal. In the meantime, my friends have been very good to me and while I have not done a lot of new pinhole work, I have been well taken care of and been well fed. A website designer and friend, Angela Prosper thought I should definitely upgrade my almost ten year old website. She is so right and she designed a new one for me; She is a great designer who is visually smart and creative and also has the ability to explain the technical “stuff” to an techno-idiot like me. Go to her website and you can see for yourself: rainydayprosper.com
On the new website there is a place for you to sign up to get an email each time I post something new (probably about twice a month). I have a new Mailchimp account.and will send you an email {if you fill out the newsletter form) when I do a new blog post. . What else have I been shooting all these long months of the pandemic? I turned to flowers and have begun to photograph them with my 8 x10 inch pinhole camera on color negative film. I found a box of 8 x 10 color negative film that I won in a raffle several years ago. I also been given some awesome tins for making new long exposure cameras. I made two into cameras and are still exposing–one is a lunch box, (it has become a 2 hole camera) several are beautiful round tins that were old tobacco cans and one is a big potato chip can that has become a three hole camera and is exposing as we speak along with the lunch box camera. I dreamed about doing pinhole portraits of people. So along with this new website, I will post a few photographs that I have made in the last year and hopefully snag you for my new email list Thank you for reading this post. Oh and I made some long exposure pinholes of the parking lot where I live in Sodo and was in a show that was featured on zoom. Here are some images that are recent. The featured image is called Portrait of Jenny Riffle because well it is her.
Flowers: double exposure
Flowers as they died.
Three hole camera from My. Doorway
Mom and Dad’s Grave
Portrait of Jenny Riffle
The Sun Trail as It Moved Southward
My Front Door: 2 hole camera
An Array of Nine Cameras: The Shunpike Window
Two Hole Camera from the Shunpike Window
Aug 4, 2020 | Blog
Here is another one of a kind print from the early 2000s. This is a self portrait taken with my old Mimaya TLR (twin lens reflex): the film slipped when advanced. I would get many frames that overlapped (a precursor to the pinhole images I do today). The camera normally shot a square but with the overlaps. the images became rectangles. This silver gelatin print I toned in sepia, then blue toner. It is the only toned print I made of this self-portrait and I will make no more because this print is made on Portriga Rapid, grade 3, fiber based, double weight, warm toned black and white enlarging paper which is not made anymore. This image was shot and printed shortly after 911; I am wearing a New York City firefighter’s t-shirt which was sent to us by a nephew who was a firefighter and worked at the Trade Towers after the attack. I felt like I was in a prison, looking out at the world after 911. This image is this week’s one-of-a-kind offer, printed on 11 x 14 inch paper and matted with 4-ply museum board 16 x 20 inches. Ready for the frame! Price, including the mat is $200.00 plus shipping and tax. Go to the shop on this website to see the image with the mat. Thanks for your interest.
Jul 30, 2020 | Blog
I wanted to make a new Home page and have my website open up to it. But alas, my template will not allow it. Might have to change, but in the meantime what I wanted to do on the home page was offer one item for sale each week. This week it is an old school contact sheet, silver gelatin, single weight paper of two sets of negatives printed together that my daughter Jess and I took in about 1994 with my old Mamiyaflex TLR. We had a deal: when I shot a photograph of her, she got to shoot one me. In this case, I shot a whole roll of her and she shot a whole roll of me. (12 photographs each). We shot these with the intention of the two rolls going together. I never made prints from this because I loved the sheet so much. It shows a little wear and tear because it has been hanging, unmatted on a wall for the last 20+ years. I have decided to offer it for sale for $200.00, un-matted and unframed. It is backed on a piece of rag paper 11 x 14 inches and will look lovely framed. The contact sheet is 8 x 10 inches. There is only one of these! And I won’t make another silver gelatin print of it. If you are interested go to my shop and buy it. You can pick directly from me and save shipping costs or I am happy to ship it. You can pay through pay-pal. This contact sheet is part of the portfolio, Kid Pictures, a 20 year documentation of my daughter and other kids growing up. Thanks for reading and for your interest. Help me pay my bills!
Jul 22, 2020 | Blog
The storefont lives on. Originally I placed five cameras in the Storefront window looking out to the so called view. Not a great view but the cameras did make photographs. I had two two-hole cameras, an altoid tin, my favorite square camera, an array of nine small cameras. All of them were looking at the same thing: a small plaza in front of the building, trees and the rain guard above the window. They were up for about six weeks so the other day I took them down. I reloaded the cameras and set them back with the exception of the altoid tin camera, I replaced that one with a larger, round camera. I actually needed the altoid tin to go to another photographer who wanted a camera. Right now I have no altoid tins in stock. If anyone has some that would be great. Send on over to me or drop by and leave outside my door. I could go and buy a 15 pack of altoids at Costco, but I really do not altoids anymore and would rather not do that. Haven’t had to buy tins for about five years. I know people have tins laying around their homes, so cough them up folks. (No pun intended).
Enough about altoid tins. Here are the photographs taken from the window of the store front. The featured photograph is a night time exposure by Shunpike of the window. It looks better at night in a photograph because there are no reflections. As you can imagine it was very difficult to chose the hundred or so images that are shown here. There are no bad pinholes! A different day I would have chosen different images. But in the meantime, the cameras which were attached to glass window took the following photographs. I do not know why they are the colors what they are. All were done with the same paper, in the same location. One would expect that they would be the same, but in the Array of Nine, they are not. I put the cameras back up today and will leave them up until I take the whole thing down in September. One more thing: the security guard for the building I am in (Amazon donates their spaces) was upset that I could only take photographs to the South since that is way that the window faces. I gave him a new telephoto camera to take a photograph of the Space Needle which is very close and to the west. He went up to the eleventh floor of building and hung the camera on a window facing the needle. This photograph of the Space Needle will be his and I will post under his name, since he hung it and is tending it. Name will be revealed when the camera is taken down in September.
The Array of Nine; small round cameras. I do not know why some of the images are brown.
A two hole camera from an old Christmas Cookie tin
An altoid tin camera
A two hole Saltine Cracker Tin camera. The camera fell down once and was put back up and then slid down a ways another time.
One of my favorite cameras; a large square tin that has been used about 20 times.
If you have a chance, go by and see the storefront in the South Lake Union neighborhood. There are, I think ten windows by ten artists up on display. Mine is on the corner of John and Boren. Thank you Shunpike for supporting the Pinhole Project. And lastly, the featured image is a photograph that I took today after rehanging the cameras. Like I said too many reflections during the day. Best if you go and see it yourself. Thanks for reading.
