Jul 9, 2016 | Blog
The Pinhole Project continues with over 2000 images made in the last two and a half years. What I love about the Project is the willingness of the participants to try different cameras and wait for sometimes up to three months to see the image they have made. While a certain breath mint tin makes a fantastic camera and has been used for the majority of the images in the Archive, several photographers have ventured into new territory and made cameras out of a variety of tins with several holes, sometimes placed evenly around the front of the tin and sometimes randomly placed. The beautiful thing about the Pinhole Project is that anything goes and almost always everything works out well, even images that have been soaked with water and are damaged, even cameras that have fallen down and been put back up several times.
This post celebrates those participants who tended and placed their multi-hole cameras or whose cameras persisted despite all odds and were put up after falling down, again and again. The two holes harken back to the old stereotype cameras of the 19th century and the old landscapes which took lots of time and effort to expose. They reinforce my love of the diptych.
One of the great experimenters has been April Surgent who took cameras with her to a remote scientific station in Antarctica a few years back. She was a novice at making the cameras and inadvertently at first poked several holes in the piece of brass shim stock where one hole usually is poked. She made beautiful images with sun trails floating across the sky like flights of birds in dreams. For a full account of her journey, take a look at an earlier blog post on here work: https://www.janetneuhauser.com/april-surgents-pinholes/
Another major player in the two hole pinhole camera world is Eric Riedel, a fellow Sunny Arms artist coop member. Eric has made over 20 exposures over the last few years and his images are stunning. He generally exposes the images for just three weeks. Here is a pinhole image he made in collaboration with Barry Christensen.. it is four hole camera–Eric and Barry each exposed two holes.
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sabelle Ranson has experimented with several two hole cameras. Here is one of her’s:
I have been working with a three hole camera; here is one of my recent 90 day exposures from the Sunny Arms Artist Coop, where I live and work in Seattle. The yellow lines in the foreground are car lights coming in and out of the parking l
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he featured image is by Steve Neuhauser who made a 60 day exposure in his boathouse, where he lives with a two hole camera.
Look for a new website for the Pinhole Project coming soon. It is now under construction….
Dec 30, 2015 | Blog
In June of 2014, the artists at the Sunny Arms, the building where I live and work in Seattle, started a long term pinhole photography project exposing cameras from our windows for 90 day periods. The only parameter was the cameras had to be pointing out at the view from our various studios. The description of this first season can be found in an earlier blog post, https://www.janetneuhauser.com/out-there-long-exposure-pinhole-photography-from-the-sunny-arms/. I am happy to report as an update, that those images from Season 1, as I like to call it, have been chosen for a public art project to be displayed on a King County bus shelter. This link shows the 2015 winners and their images: http://pcnw.org/connect/2015-city-panorama-photo-mural-project/ . Completion of the bus shelter is expected in the spring of 2016.
Meanwhile, the artists here at the Sunny Arms have continued to expose cameras for two more seasons. I did not know whether there would be any difference between the photographs from different seasons and I was grateful for the commitment of the residents to tend their cameras. We have been gathering time and light, and I am happy to report that there indeed a big difference in the images. Most of us have put cameras close to the same vantage point for each season. All the paper and the cameras have been the same.
This fall, for the Sunny Arms Open Studios, I printed 20 diptychs of the first two seasons. The third season is coming down now and I give you a few of the the paired images. In March we will start the last of the four seasons: the Spring Equinox to the Summer Solstice. I love this project for it’s slowness and the quiet way the entire building is working together to make a document. Cameras fall down and get put back up; tape slides down the windows, trucks rattle the tins loose. The trees gain leaves and drop them, the sun trails move across the sky. Two years will have passed when we are done with all four seasons instead of one year, which would have seemed rushed. We skipped seasons for a number of reasons: the cameras did not come down all at once and I thought it was important that everyone see the image they made before they made the next one. It will be interesting to see if this delay made a difference.
Here are a few preliminary results:
Above: Looking north from the Snoqualmie Street first floor entrance, Fall to Winter. Right: Winter to Spring, same view. Both images made by Janet Neuhauser
Above: From the third floor (left), looking northeast, Winter to Spring. From the fifth floor,(right), looking northeast, Spring to Summer. These were made by Bang Jing Sun (left) and Janel Kolby (right).
Above: First floor main entrance, left Summer to Fall, Right: Winter to Spring. Both images made by Janet Neuhauser
Above: This one from Kevin Wilson and Laurie LeClair, first floor looking east. Left, Winter to Spring. Right: Fall to Winter.
There are plenty of others. I am just now in the process of sorting them out. We will begin the final season this Spring. Then after another 90 days, I will report back.
Featured image is from the first floor main entrance with a two hole pinhole camera, Fall to Winter.
Sep 22, 2015 | Blog
I am happy to announce the retrieval of two long exposure pinhole cameras. One was left out on a windy high place in the Olympic National Forest (for about eight months) and was intact albeit face down on the ground when found. The other, retrieved from under a bridge on the Lost Coast of Northern California, was covered with spider webs. The former was stapled and nailed and taped onto a stump just at the tree line in a place that is called Top of the World by the locals. That place appears to be a hangout, but the pinhole camera did not stick out among damaged skeet targets, gun casings and broken beer bottles. Early on in the exposure, the camera must have fallen, then fallen again. Someone put it back up at least three times. The incredible view was not recorded, just a crazy mishmash of sun trails.
Then last summer on a trip to the Lost Coast of California, another camera out for just over two years was retrieved. Under an old steel bridge that covered an obscure little river, it survived without falling down or getting wet. Wedged underneath the steel structure, pointing straight down, this camera did not record sun trails but orange squiggly lines, perhaps kids with flashlights under the bridge, who knows what happened. Driving there, I was pretty certain the camera could not have survived for such a long time. But it did and that retrieval is one I will never forget.
I love so much about both of these images. The simplicity of a piece of black and white enlarging paper patiently gathering light over time and then somehow showing color when scanned. The fact that one forgets about the little boxes, time goes forward and then there they are still recording. These little breath mint can pinhole cameras are a tenacious bunch. I am happy to share their images with you.
An Aside: the featured image was made en route to retrieve the two year camera in Northern California. A two-hole camera was placed in the back window of the pick-up truck, the home away from home. The exposure was about two weeks, the time it took to go and get the camera, make some more pinholes, put some more cameras out and drive home. This image feels like a big grin to me, which pretty much sums up how I feel about these images.
Nov 18, 2014 | Blog
Right around the Solstice last summer, I asked everyone in the building where I live and work to expose a pinhole camera from their windows for ninety days for the Pinhole Project. The idea was to expose all the cameras from each studio in the building, leaving the cameras up from the Solstice to the Equinox. The cameras recorded amazing trails of the sun all summer and into the fall. The views are recognizable, at least for those of us who are here every day and tended the cameras through the heat of last summer. The colors are mysterious and varied. I thank my colleagues, friends, fellow artists, neighbors all who participated. I did not know, until we did this, how beautiful our neighborhood actually is or much the sun shines on us or how the freeway is just a little toy off in the distance. I also did not know you can see the light of the sun trails to north and the south as well as east and west.
The building where I live and work is an artist’s coop. We own the building together, 20 units in all and I have always loved the views, from all sides of the building. I wanted to capture them with the long exposure pinhole cameras, hoping this was a good idea, but during the ninety days, I worried that the images might come out all the same. the views, the sun trails, the colors and the group as a whole would be boring. Scanning completely proved me wrong. The thirty images which I have uploaded here are titled with the name/unit number of the pinhole photographer. The grid, as it appears below, echoes how the printed images were hung in my studio last weekend. Below the grid are all the images which can be viewed individually. The building sits up against I-5 in the SoDo area of Seattle right before the Spokane Street interchange. The front of the building faces due west, the back east, a few units have south windows, and all the units that face north have windows in that direction. The featured image shows a pinhole image of the building that I made last spring. It is a 30 day exposure and shows the building’s west side. You can see the sun trails from the east above the building and the sun trails from the west reflected in the front windows.
The 30 images were featured at the Open Studios at out building this past November 15th. They are still up on my studio wall and will be up until Christmas time. Another opening will happen early in December. Stay tuned for dates and times and thanks for your continued support of the Pinhole Project.
Oct 2, 2014 | Blog
April Surgent is a glass artist who went to Antarctica on an artist grant with 20 pinhole cameras. She worked there for several weeks, making many creative and unusual pinhole photographs using cameras that had two or more pinholes. Tonight, a show including these images opens at Traver Gallery in Seattle. She made several of the images into engravings and the result is beautiful. I just uploaded 59 of her original pinhole images to the Pinhole Archive. Take a look at the images in the Pinhole archive (https://www.janetneuhauser.com/thepinholeprojectgallery/) and then stop at Traver Gallery(http://www.travergallery.com/gallery_artist_details/April-Surgent.aspx) and see the show. She has taken the Pinhole Project to new heights.
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