I was thrilled a few years back when I received a mysterious package in the mail. It was a pinhole camera which I had sent to Eric Renner and Nancy Spencer the year before. They of course are the co-directors of Pinhole Resource and incredible pinhole photographers who have published many books on pinhole photography of their own work and the work of others, among many other accomplishments. They had placed the pinhole camera in one of the galleries for the exhibition Poetics of Light, at the New Mexico History Museum, an exhibition they had curated. The camera was up for six months – the duration of the show but the galleries were very dark with no actual daylight directly coming into them. I did not have much hope for the exposure and frankly, forgot all about it. When the camera came back, I did not think the image was worthwhile enough to send to the Museum or to the Pinhole Resource. But now I am looking at it and it did record something of the show and the show was so important to Pinhole Photography in general that I decided to write this blog post about it. So glad that I resurrected the image and apologies for not posting it right after the show. Here is a great link to the Poetics of Light show .www.nmhistorymuseum.org/calendar.php?&id=1946\ and a book about it, Poetics of Light.
The Pinhole Resource with Nancy Spencer and Eric Renner in charge has inspired me for years. I am lucky enough to own and use two of their Leonardo cameras (8 x 10 and 4 x 5 pinholes) and a Zero 2000 (a 120 pinhole) all of which I bought from them. I was also published by Eric Renner in Pinhole Photography: From Historic Technique to Digital Application. It was the first recognition of my pinhole photography and it was incredible to be in the official history; the image I sent to him for the book became a part of the Pinhole Resource collection which in turn was donated to the Palace of the Governors Photo Archive, New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe. The featured image for this post is the one Eric Renner published in Pinhole Photography (link previously mentioned).
on deaf ears is another book of Eric Renner and Nancy Spencer’s that I highly recommend. It is a book of still lifes made over many years and then photographed with a pinhole camera. Incredible art. You should go to Pinhole Resource and buy a copy. Renner and Spencer also published the Pinhole Journal for twenty-two years and collected a vast number of images from photographers they featured in the Journal. That archive made up the Poetics of Light exhibition and was donated to the Palace of the Governors Photo Archive, Pinhole Resource Collection, New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, NM. You can see it here: Palace of the Governors Photo Archive, Pinhole Resource Collection
So while thinking about pinhole photography which is 95% of what I do these days, I have to pay homage to the Pinhole Resource and the history of this medium. I love shooting film in the pinhole camera. I am grateful that I found such a wonderful thing to do with my life.
Three years ago, I drove to the Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California to rephotograph an Eadweard Muybridge landscape. I should not say I drove because I was driven both then and now. Three years ago I left my black hoody way up a hill where we decided to rephotograph. You can read about it all in my blog post from 2016: http://www.janetneuhauser.com/in-search-of-eadweard-muybridge/ What happens in that post is essential to understand the following.
Lave Beds National Monument. A quiet out of the way place.
Last week we returned to the Lava Beds to see if perhaps the hoody sweatshirt might still be there. We were convinced that the hoody either could not have survived the elements or someone found it soon after we left. I wondered. I hoped that someone was walking around wearing it everywhere like I did. But who would hike up through those tick infested grasses just to rephotograph an obscure Eadweard Muybridge or to find an old black hoody?
The hill is steeper than it looks. Our day last week was bright and sunny. A slight breeze blew. So different from that hot day almost exactly three years ago. Now as then no one was about and last week there was a chill in the air. We parked below the hill and started to climb up and up and up. We spread out to see if we could find the exact place where I sat on the sweatshirt on that hot day. Bruce ahead of me, searching with his impeccable memory, closed in on the location all buried in grasses. And just like that, there be the sweatshirt! I said to Bruce, “Promise me not to touch anything before I photograph it.” He yelled for me to hurry. I took two iphone photographs, then sat down on the hill and we rephotographed the rephotograph this time with 4 x 5 inch color negative film in the pinhole camera. Those images have been sent off to the lab to be developed so I cannot post them yet. But if they are successful, the Lava Bed saga will continue.
We will keep our fingers crossed that the new images were correctly exposed. The featured image is from the old blog post three years ago of the sweatshirt left on the hill photographed with the iphone; binoculars attached to make the image with a telephoto lens. Am I obsessed? Probably. I love all the levels present in this saga. Some of them are: how something human-made lasts too long a time and does not decay, how this place is so remote and so quiet and so richly beautiful and so ignored, how the landscape has changed since the Modoc hunted there, since Muybridge photographed there and in the last three years. since we were last there. Thanks for reading part two of the saga. Stay tuned for the rephotograph.
PS: Visit Georgetown Records on Vale Street in the heart of Georgetown. They sell quality sweatshirts and lots of vinyl too!
As found among the grasses.The logo right after removal.What is happiness?Grasses, weather or rodents?Back home
I am so happy to have received a month-long fellowship from the Civita Institute to go to Italy for a month to make pinhole photographs. The Civita Institute is based in Seattle and gives three fellowships a year to all types of people. Here is a quote from their website:
Fellowships are open to architects, planners, designers, artists, writers and other arts professionals practicing in all states west of the Rocky Mountains, including Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. They provide an unparalleled opportunity for the recipients to undertake a project of their own choosing related to current or anticipated professional work, in a highly unique setting, far from routine obligations.
I will go to Civita in November and do long exposure pinhole photography with color negative film in a big camera and on paper in recycled tins. These tins/cameras will expose for the entire month I am there. The landscapes on film will be 30 to 45 minute exposures. Civita is an ancient Etruscan town teetering on a hilltop with no cars and a small year round population. I love the last line of the Institute’s statement where is says I will be in a highly unique setting far from routine obligations. I am so interested to see if I can capture a both the history and the present in one long exposure. Below are three views of the town. In the meantime, I have a lot to think about and many questions to be answered…..The featured image is from when I was in Italy for seven weeks in 1998. A photograph on film of a Via Cava: an old Etruscan road dug deep into the tuffa rock. This one near Sovana. It was taken as a vertical, cropped for this blog. I hope to explore more of these roads in the countryside when I am there. You an see more of my Italy work from the earlier trip here: http://www.janetneuhauser.com/italy/
With the exception of the featured image which is mine, the Civita images in this blog are from the internet.
I am posting this about the book called Innards: Pinhole Landscapes which has just been published. It is a 12 x 12 inch book and comes in a beautiful boxed set with a print of your choice included. You can buy it directly from me, cost is $300.00 with a $10.00 postage and handling fee and Washington state sales tax. If you are interested, please contact me, and we can set up a way to pay, either through Pay Pal, my website or a good old fashioned check via snail mail. Then I will mail you the book, in it’s box with the print. There are 24 images in the book that you can choose from any one of them for the print. You can go to http://www.blurb.com/b/9325749-innards to preview it but please DO NOT buy it on that website. It is only available from me. There was also a post on Daniel Milnor’s blog Shifter about the book; here is the link for that: http://shifter.media/creative-innards-janet-neuhauser/
The featured image is the cover of the book. You can look at the images on this website or at blurb.com to see the images inside. Or you can go to the front page of this website and click under Portfolios on Innards to see some of the images included in the book. Now that there is a shop set up on this website you can buy it directly from that.
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: http://www.janetneuhauser.com/for-dad-and-his-love-of-photography/ and here http://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!
