As most of you know, I was a resident at the Willapa Bay AiR for the month of October. Photographing with my 120 Pinhole camera onto color negative film, I wanted to make a personal record of the Long Beach peninsula, a place I have been going to regularly for over 30 years. Two miles wide and 28 miles long, the peninsula is bounded by the Willapa Bay to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The roar of the ocean is a constant. The people who live there make their living from oysters, cranberries, fish and the tourists. Leadbetter National Wildlife Refuge, on the north is a wonderful place to hike and walk. Cape Disappointment is on the South end along with many camp grounds and the Lewis and Clark museum.
I set out every day to photograph, often taking no more than 12 photographs a day (one roll). I looked at and listened to the ocean and the birds and the bay. Here is my first take on the images. Thirty-four of them are in this portfolio and I am amazed by how each one speaks to me. As always thank you for looking. Please visit the Willapa Bay Peninsula and love it as much as I do.
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.
Recently the Pinhole Project received a storefront window in the South Lake Union Area sponsored by Shunpike. This storefront is a 12 foot long window that will house some of the Pinhole Project images for about three months. It will house a very small percentage of the images in the archive. The window is three feet deep and I will be putting prints up on the wall and cameras up on the window (from the inside). The goal is to photograph during the duration of the installation and refill the cameras as I empty them and put up recent prints. So far I have some cameras to put up, and nine small round tins which will be in a grid. I am glad to have this opportunity and am printing photographs wanting to print many more. I love the simplicity of this photography. The image below I printed originally but recently a ten foot print was made for the window. This First Season of the Sunny Arms Artist Project, “Out There” is featured here. The Sunny Arms artists exposed pinhole cameras from their windows looking out, from Equinox to Solstice, a total of four times (all four seasons of the year, 90 days each season). The building is in South Sodo, five stories, in an industrial neighborhood; decidedly not beautiful but these images make it seem so. The first season, below is on a bus shelter at South Beacon Avenue and South Holly Street. I knew it would print well large. The bus shelter project was sponsored by the Photo Center NW and King County Metro; they put photographs on shelters all over King County. (Go here for a previous blog post on the bus shelter project). Take a look.
I have been poring over all the Pinhole Project images. Each day brings new choices. With almost four thousand images in the archive it is difficult to choose. I have been printing from different “galleries” or folders on the website. One print I have done is from people who have shot at least ten images and now they have their own folders on the website. I am not done yet but I printed this one yesterday.
These big pieces of paper are 22 x 17 inches. I think I can only fit six in the installation. On the window, inside looking out will be several pinhole tins that will be taking photographs of the street. I will use several tins and put a print on the window next to the camera so people can understand how they see. I have a saltine tin two hole that has been used three times. The problem is, I only have crazy photographs from that camera, it must a camera with the crazies. My brother, Steve Neuhauser, used the camera inside his boathouse where he lives on his boat. This is what he took a photograph of. The featured image is also from the Saltine Tin.
This image was made in a old Poinsettia covered Christmas tin. I think it must have held cookies. It is the perfect shape for a two hole camera. This I took during the pandemic, hung the day the lockdown began and finished on April 26th. I am planning on using it in the window too.
So if you need something to do during the summer, go downtown after June 1st, the install date. Park in the South Lake Union Area (SLUA) and walk over to Boren and John Streets. You can see all the images that are up and stand very still for oh about a week and you can be recorded on the cameras in the window. If you walk around there are several other artists with windows in the area, I think 8 total. There will not be a formal tour of the windows by Shunpike this year as in the past. But you can walk around down there and it is a pleasant neighborhood. Thank you #Shunpike for this opportunity. The featured image is one of the big prints I made with a lot of images on it. You can see the image in its entirety at the Storefront. I will post some photographs of the installation when it is installed. Thanks for reading. And get a camera and join the Pinhole Project.
I lived in Civita di Bagnoregio for 32 days from mid-November into December of 2019. I received a fellowship from the Civita Institute to photograph the old Etruscan hilltop town with my pinhole cameras. I took my 120 film pinhole camera (the “Zero”), my 4 x 5 inch pinhole camera (the “Leonardo”), 35 long-exposure (30 days) metal tins–homemade pinhole cameras from various containers, round tins, an old Saltine tin, altoid tins, and several tins that were from different origins, all of which I exposed onto paper (Those long-exposure images are the subject of another post). With the two bigger cameras, I shot color negative film and those are the ones shown here. I worked everyday shooting the 120 film camera with medium format negatives. That camera is versatile. I set it to shoot a rectangle and advanced as if I had shot a square. Overlap occurred and in some instances, two or more negatives were butted against each other. I also double exposed several negatives. This technical information is important because it is what I hoped I was doing. In other words most of these images are made from two or more negatives side by side on the film. Negatives that were together on the film were scanned and printed digitally. Not every image was on purpose. Some are plain old happy accidents that I am, well, happy about. All of the negatives are fabrications, not actually how it “looked” because I exposed different places together that I thought would look good. I was lucky to be in Civita before the pandemic hit and lucky to leave right before it became widely known. Civita and Italy have withstood centuries of plague, earthquakes, war. The strength of Civita is in the buildings, the cobblestones, the people. I hope that that strength comes through. Everything here has been printed on 17 x 22 inch paper as artist’s proofs and most are available for $100.00/each. Please inquire. There is only one of each image available at that price, The featured print is a part of the portfolio. Titled: Road to Tunnel (with Cloud) UPDATE: I have sold 11 of these images that I call Artist Proof Prints at 100.00. There is a slight discoloration or exposure problem in each.,I have nine left. Inquire with your interest. The corrected edition prints start at 400.00 per print. They are made in an edition of 10 and the price goes up to 750.00 each as the edition sells out.
I spent a month in Civita di Bagnoregio, an Etruscan hilltop town in Italy on a fellowship from the Civita Institute, (civitainstitute.org). Since I arrived home mid-December, I have been scanning and editing images. I am still not done but three days ago, finished scanning the 120 color negative film that I shot in a little pinhole camera called the Zero. It took a beating in Civita, the cobblestones, and the tuff rock outside, and the stone floors in the houses are all unforgiving. I dropped the camera, it broke, I taped it back together and kept going. It gave me 32 rolls of film with about 190 files. I shot so that each image related to the one before or after. This was a difficult thing to do but I wanted to overlap the images so I shot with the camera on a rectangular setting and advanced it as if it were set to a square. This way I did not get any lines between the frames of the negatives–and I made 16 images to a roll instead of 12. I could not see any of these images because the film had to be developed once I returned to the States. Also pinhole cameras do not have a viewfinder and I had to become astute at knowing what the cameras would see. Two things helped me get great negatives: the Pinhole Assist app which enabled me to use my iPhone as a light meter and the wonderful people at the Shot on Film Store in Lake City, WA (www.shotonfilmstore.com/), who developed my film and did a great job.
So what did I photograph? The old Etruscan hilltop town of Civita where people have lived for thousands of years: this is what was before me. The pinhole exposures are at least 10 seconds and no people showed up in my photos. Mostly I photographed every morning at sunrise until about 9:30 when the tourists started to arrive. I photographed the town, the streets (cobblestones with no cars), the landscape, the drop off at the edges of the town, the hilltop and the ancient church, the walls, the stones, the light, the fog, and of course the incredible color. (Overexposure exaggerated it). Doing this was a joy but made me quite nervous at the same time. Was I getting the correct exposure? Did I really think I could overlap the images and it would work? With the amazing amount of wind and rain would anything be discernible? What would the townspeople think of these images? The town is a museum but lived in as well. It isn’t the way it actually is became my mantra. Each day I would photograph with my Zero for a few hours, come back, eat breakfast, clean up the apartment and then go back out around noon to take some more photographs. The afternoon was more difficult with the number of tourists in the town and the light. In late afternoon I would eat some lunch, then work on the computer for a while and as soon as it got dark, go back out again and take night photographs with my DSLR. (see previous blog post janetneuhauser.com/civita-a-month/). Then a nice long Italian dinner and bed.
Now, as I scan and look and scan and look, I am slowly understanding what it was that I did. Mixing the landscape with the architecture made sense, but it was something I had not done before. I am posting thirteen images (including the featured image) that show the variety of the 120 pinhole images that were captured. All are from the Zero camera 120 on color negative film (except the first one, a double exposure from the 4 x 5 large format pinhole still color negative film in which I exposed the full moon outside my kitchen door all night long, then the walkway to the entrance in the fog on the same sheet of film). I find the editing process to be as satisfying as the shooting. Thanks for looking. (PS Click on the first image to get a slide show).
The featured image is the top of the entrance to the Altar of the Virgin Mary down off the trail by the cliffs. Working titles of the others top to bottom, left to right are:
Full moon trail and Walkway (Double Exposure/4 x 5 negative)
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