Recently I spent about 24 hours with my brother Steve, scanning my father’s old slides of our childhood and some slides of Steve’s from the 1970s. I was reminded again, at how lucky I am to have had a father who was into photography and so innately good at it. It must have rubbed off on me somehow. Many of the slides had started to decay, but most were fine. I discovered that I loved the old messed up slides, the ones that had started to decay showed such depth and beauty. The history of my early childhood is here. Dad shot slides when he wanted color images and black and white film all the rest of time. Slides were special and I remember him saying how important it was to get the exposure right on and how important it was to make a good photograph. When I think about how strapped for money our family was, the money spent on photography had priority and the folks believed that it was important not to worry about spending on it. I decided to publish many of these images just so my viewers could see the amazing color that is still in there after all these years and so that they could see another side of my father’s photographic history. I have written about his dedication to photography before and that dedication shows through here as well. More images to come in the near future. You can look at some other blog posts here: https://www.janetneuhauser.com/for-dad-and-his-love-of-photography/ and here https://www.janetneuhauser.com/ode-to-mom-and-dad-and-their-love-of-photography/
Bertha and Reuben: Neuhauser grandparentsUncle Bob (Dad’s brother) with tractor in South Dakota.
Our old boat: five children and two adults!
Grandpa Neuhauser in South Dakota.
Family shot: Carol, Dan, Mary, Mom. Steve and I in front row.
Mom at the fireplace Dad had just built. With a couple cats I think. Slide damage!
I have posted a lot of these images before but now I am hopeful that I can make them into a portfolio and put it up on this website. Here is a statement that I haveI wrote.
The images in this collection are made on color negative film, scanned and printed digitally onto cotton rag paper with archival inks. They were either made in a Zero 2000 medium format camera; or in a large format (4 x 5 inch) camera. Some were all-night long exposures, most were exposed for 30-45 minutes when light phenomena happens that can not be predicted. That passage of time is important in these images, for pinhole photography gathers light and records an extended moment differently than the camera with a lens. People become shadows, trees seem to replicate themselves, crashing waves flatten out. colors exaggerate while double exposures occur without intention.Movement is recorded while the time passes. I call this group of photographs Innards because the landscape is soft and the light is layered with what feels like memory. The images put me in touch with a side of myself I didn’t know existed. Over years of experimentation with the pinhole camera, I’ve come to this unconventional place, a mysterious landscape that glows and glistens from within–slightly ominous, endangered, beautiful, and sad. Imperfect and personal.
The preview image is a double exposure titled SomeWhere Near Yachats, Oregon Coast.
Many of these images are available in a self-published boxed book called Innards. Purchase of the book comes with your choice of a print in that is in the book. Published in an edition of 24, there are 10 still available,. Go to the shop on this website to preview the book.
As director of the Pinhole Project, I am always looking for new ideas and new cameras with which to make pinhole images for both me and the participants. Recently, in the past year or so, I have been using two cameras for myself again and again: a three hole metal can that is a former Dewar’s Scotch container and a smaller squarish can that is a bit bigger than the Altoid tins but has only one hole. I have been working on two series of images with these cameras: the Getaways are images that I expose from a car or truck during a road trip. I have made several of these; and love the way they record the sun trails. The Home series which I have made with the three hole can, are images made within my studio and just outside of it, usually exposed for at least six weeks and they record in triplet a myriad of things both inside and outside the studio. I have also used a smaller tin and a round tin for these images. A friend gave me a Solarcan and I made one with that as well. Since pinhole photography has become something of an obsession with me, I generally have two or three cameras exposing at one time. When I tire of the look or run out of ideas I will try something different. In the meantime, I present some of the images to you, first the Getaways and then the Home series.
The Getaways: All were made from a moving vehicle with the pinhole camera attached either outside the car or on a window facing out. Exposures are usually about 2 weeks. The titles are as follows (top to bottom): To Doe Bay and Back, Oregon Road Trip, To Northern Idaho and Back, To the Grand Tetons and Back, Top of the World, The Sunny Arms from the Parking Lot, Near Seiku, The featured image was made on a road trip to Oregon with the camera on the front hood of the car facing b
Home Series with the 3 hole camera: First two are of the windows in my studio. The next two are from the front windows looking out. The blue image was made with a Solarcan pinhole camera exposed for three weeks. The next image is of the curtains and the window sill made with a regular one hole camera and the last image is with a round can inside the screen doors entering the studio.
There are many more. These are just the most recent. Thanks for looking and if you would like to be a part of the Pinhole Project, go to The Pinhole Project website and send me an email to join.
As most of you know I was a high school photography teacher for 24 years. I loved the job, working everyday with young people who were intrigued by and creative with photography. Teaching them was fun. I have now retired from that job. I hate that word retired. It sounds as if I am off to bed to do nothing for the remainder of the days I have left. For me retirement is not about that. I developed a good work ethic over the years as a high school teacher which continues to pay off now: I get up and drink coffee with my work. I honestly do not know how I had time do the high school job. I spent at least 60 hours a week working including with the commute (which involved a 30 minute ferry ride). On top of that I tended to my studio and did what I could with my personal work. I had shows and grants and sold photographs but it was “on the side.” Now it is all about simply producing for the pure joy of it.
So what am I doing right now? The Pinhole Landscapes of course. The Innards Portfolio as I have come to call those images. I am also working on a cookbook of my Mother’s recipes, the DSLR images I randomly take, the Pinhole Project, and two personal pinhole projects called Getaways and Home (a future post is in the works) and I of course am updating my two websites and applying for grants. The Pinhole Landscapes involve a lot of post-processing: the negatives are very dusty and the color is off. Sometimes I reverse them horizontally. Sometimes I change things in photoshop: the aspect ratio, the background among other things. I want these images to knock me for a loop, just like the darkroom has in the past. I refuse to be judgmental about post-processing decisions.
I just spent 17 days in November in New York City photographing the archive of my dear deceased mentor from graduate school, Judy Seigel. Many things amaze me about her work. She produced a huge, incredible body of images from the about the time I met her (in the early 1980s) until about 2015. Her work ethic was so strong. She was not always easy to be around. She asked me hard questions and got impatient when I did not have an answer. Yet I learned so much from her and I have continued to learn from her looking at her images while I photographed them. She produced a strong and unappreciated, odd body of work. She had an unique vision. She was experimental and fearless. She thought a regular silver print without any “post factory manipulations” was boring. Her work inspires me to go into the darkroom with the Innards Portfolio. They are film negatives after all. I have an idea to transform these images and make them both about process and the image. I will let you know how that works. Meanwhile, the studio is glorious, depressing, exhilarating, Some days I do not go out: I mean I do not go outside at all. Forgive me if I have canceled a date with you. But now that I have the gift of time, I am using it.
In the past I eschewed the DSLR. But in fact I am shooting with it now and again, especially when I am on a road trip. Here are some photographs with the DSLR from my recent trip to the Grand Tetons. I did shoot a lot with the pinhole camera as well, and I took along a telephoto lens (a rarity for me) for the DSLR. I used it to make studies for the pinholes. Maybe you will see some sort of relationship between the two types of shooting. Maybe not Let me know. You can see two of the trip’s pinholes in the More Innards post. Another post on them later.
To the Grand Tetons and Back, 2018
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These images are but a few of the 500 or so that I made with the DSLR. It will take some time to sort them out. The images above have popped out as favorites. The featured image is from inside a cabin near Jackson Lake with the Grand Tetons in the background.
As most people know, my parents both passed away recently. We celebrated their lives and their love on March 4th which would have been their 73rd wedding anniversary. They filled the lives of others with their presence, always involved. As children we had a big vegetable garden, chickens, bees, fruit trees. We camped, lived life in the NW, mostly outdoors. When I think about where they both started and where they ended up, their life together makes sense.
My mother’s father worked for a logging company in the Pacific NW. Her family moved 16 times before she was a junior in high school, living in logging camps around the NW. At 16, she decided to finish high school in one place, and stayed with friends of the family in Morton, WA so she could do this. After high school she went to college in California which was interrupted by WWII, meeting my father and then having four kids who came in quick succession.
My father grew up on a farm in the middle of South Dakota. The farm, now thousands of acres, is still owned and worked by family members. At 15, Dad decided that he wanted to finish high school, which meant living 75 miles away from his family in Pierre. the nearest town and also the state capital. It took him an extra year to finish because he had to work to pay his room and board. Both of my parents were determined to get a diploma, both were avid readers, loved to try and do new things, They both knew that they were destined for lives different than their parents had. When they met during WWII, at Keyport, in Washington State where my dad was stationed, they fell in love immediately and were married within a few months.
Upon their passing, my siblings and I started to go through their things and found an incredible amount of photographs that documented every aspect of their lives as well as a huge archive of photographs of their childhoods taken mostly by their parents, in particular their mothers. It was not a surprise that so many photographs existed, it was a surprise that I had not seen so many. For both of them, when they turned 90, I collected many of their photographs and made books dedicated to each of their lives. My mother had also made photo albums for each of her children and grandchildren, culling out the best from the past. But beyond the albums, there was a giant black metal trunk full of images, boxes of seemingly random images and many envelopes full of negatives and prints.
Photography was always a very important part of what we did as a family. In the early 1960’s, Dad bought a Polaroid Land camera that was seemed like a miracle. Instant photography!! That summer we took hundreds of those images. Recently, I found a taped together polaroid of our house, and yard. It brings back memories of that summer, shooting anything and everything that came along.
After that summer, Dad got another polaroid that made beautiful rectangular images. Dad always had a camera with him; when I was about ten, I remember his mother, my grandmother Bertha telling me to always have a camera ready, loaded and at hand in case any thing “came up” that needed to be photographed. During most of my childhood, Dad had an old Argus 35 mm camera with which he made Kodachrome slides. Since photography was important, it is no surprise that I loved it at an early age. I was given a camera at the age of 10 for Christmas and took it everywhere. I only got one roll of film at a time, but when I shot that, there was always another roll ready. Each image was precious and important and I think this is the way that my parents felt about photography too. Dad kept up on all the latest inventions in photography and in his eighties acquired a computer, a printer and a digital camera. He loved printing his digital images, loved taking photographs with that little digital camera, thought it all amazing and miraculous.
This morning, I spent some time going through what may be the last major box of images. So many questions for both my parents, so many mysterious, funny, really well composed images. I am grateful to have grown up in such an environment, so rich in image making. So here is my thanks to both of them for passing on this love of taking a picture, for acknowledging the importance of it and for never getting rid of any images. Our personal history is intact and so wonderful to view.
I post this blog with a handful of images from their lives; taken by their mothers, themselves and by me. I have written several other blog posts on the publication of their 90th birthday books, and my Uncle Bob and Grandmothers involvement in photography as well.
My Mother, her Grandparents, Parents, husband, Siblings and Childre
