Apr 19, 2014 | Blog
My first encounter with pinhole photography was in 1986 when late one night, my husband and I punched a hole in the brick wall of the landing outside my studio door to see if we could put a window there overlooking the vacant lot. The next morning when I went upstairs to go into the studio, the vacant lot outside flooded onto the wall opposite the hole. It was a camera obscura! The image was projected by that crude hole and it was elegant and dreamlike. Still, I did not think to use the pinhole camera in my own work or make an actual camera until about 5 years later when I got a 4 x 5 pinhole camera design from my friend, Craig Barber, (www.craigbarber.com) a pioneer in pinhole photography. I was teaching photography in a community college, looking for ways to engage students and pinhole photography seemed a perfect fit: it was inexpensive, students could build their own cameras from scrap board and it taught them an enormous amount about exposure. I tried out Craig’s design and shot some dixie cups sitting on a potter’s wheel. I fell in love. The students loved it too and about a year later, I was trying to figure out a way to capture what I saw under the 8x loupe that I wore around my neck in the darkroom. I was entranced by the way everything, not just negatives and contact sheets, looked under the loupe. How to get up close and capture that beautiful glowing light that made any old detritus look good? I actually had a dream one night that I could do this with a pinhole camera. I got up in the morning, duct-taped a loupe to a pinhole camera and took a photograph of a butter knife on a napkin leftover from dinner the night before. You can see the loupe itself in the image, the camera was too wide-angle, but I knew I was onto something I wanted pursue.
For the next several years, I photographed many things under the loupe that I attached to a Leonardo 4 x 5 pinhole camera. I shot these images on ISO 400 film, mostly guessing the exposures, developing the negatives in my dusty basement darkroom. I enlarged them to 16 x 20 prints, as large as I could go before the soft focus fell apart. The series which I titled LoupeHoles, (you can view some of these images under the portfolio section) consisted of all kinds of subjects that could fit under the loupe but gradually I started to concentrate on dead things, old dusty cast-offs, things that nobody else paid attention to. Thinking back, these images were a part of my pyschology of the time: dark, somewhat morose, isolated images that were really reflections of my own personal nightmares and fears. But the prints were beautiful, big and gutsy, toned in blue and gold and selenium. For many years, I sent them out to various calls for work, showed them to dealers and curators and was always rejected. The work remained unseen until Eric Renner and Nancy Spencer from the Pinhole Resource (www.pinholeresource.com) offered to publish some of the images in the Pinhole Journal (Volume 20, #2) and include The Point of A Pencil in their book, Pinhole Photography: Rediscovering a Historic Technique, (third edition). Then Eric and Nancy accepted six prints into their collection of pinhole images at the Pinhole Resource. Recently, The Point of A Pencil became a part of the New Mexico State History Museum pinhole collection. The rest of the images remain unshown.
After years of working on the LoupeHoles, I acquired in 2000, a roll film pinhole camera, a Zero 2000. For about five years, I shot hundreds of rolls of film with this camera, self- portraits, portraits, landscapes and still life. These images are not so dark, more about movement, soft focus, the dream-like state that Pinhole Photography can reference. I photographed landscapes in and around the area where I grew up on the Kitsap Peninsula, west of Seattle. Using this camera made me rethink the landscape, understand it not as a representation of reality but as a representation of memory. In 2006, I started to teach digital photography only and pinhole photography was laid aside. I had no time for darkroom. I needed to make a living and to do this I had to learn digital photography.
But pinhole photography did not languish. I started the Pinhole Project, so anyone without a darkroom could make a camera on old school paper. Lately, I have been wondering if I should not just ditch my digital cameras and go back to film and pinhole based image making. I have realized that I am a very intuitive, low tech photographer in this high tech age. Go to the archive on this website and take a look at the amazing array of images from over 600 photographers. (www.janetneuhauser.com/thepinholeproject) While I love digital photography (really just another form of image making), I miss the film based pinhole image, its mystery, its slowness, its magic. I have been making the long exposure color negative images. The next step is to clean the cobwebs out of darkroom and start again with black and white negatives. So much to do.
Dixie cups on a potter’s wheel: my first pinhole photograph, circa 1994
Butter knife on a napkin: paper negative with positive. First pinhole photograph with an 8x loupe attached to a camera, circa 1996
The Point of A Pencil, from the series, LoupeHoles
Featured image: Self-Portrait: Day Off, made with a Zero 2000 pinhole camera
Apr 13, 2014 | Blog
The first time I photographed my daughter Jess was about twelve hours after she was born. The nurse brought her to me in my hospital room, she was wailing with what I later figured out was hunger. I laid her on the slice of light falling on the bed and took a few pictures. She had beautiful eyebrows, wide open eyes and she quit crying right away, looking at me steadily while I made a few exposures. The image from that morning became the start of the Kid Pictures: photographs of Jess as she grew up. I thought all these years that the Kid Pictures were about Jess but lately I have realized that they also are about me as I remembered/relived my childhood. Looking at the Kid Pictures, the viewer might infer that Jess was an unhappy and depressed child. In fact, that child was me not Jess. The images I made of her were dark and painful: how I felt about my past at that time. I don’t think Jess ever thought the photographs were real documents of her life, even when she posed with chicken pox all over her body: we made the images consciously thinking bad; willing to extend ourselves into what we believed was the fictional world of the photograph.
Since a photographic record of my childhood (except for the awkward, posed family shots) does not exist, I have often thought about how it would look in pictures. If I could go back and recapture my past what images would I take? Probably not the bad and sad moments; maybe the sun when it sank behind the mountains, huge and snowcapped, or the wind as it tore through the neighbor’s orchard, or the old apple tree where I perched high up in the branches to read. That is how I see it now. Did I have to raise a child to come to terms with my own childhood? Maybe. Did I have to take dark, solemn photographs of her to meet the past head on? Probably. Thank goodness for photography which gave me an entry into my subconscious memory. And thank goodness for Jess and the other kids who were willing to pose for me. Maybe it was a relief to them not to have to be cute kids for a picture. Maybe it actually was how they felt at the moment. But really, what kind of accurate record is photography anyway?
Still, it is Jess who is the subject of the Kid Pictures. I can only hope that she remains as enthusiastic now about the images as she was when she was a kid. I used to say that the Kid Pictures were about a lot of different kids. In fact, I did photograph six or seven other kids over the years as well. The images of them are of the same ilk. Perhaps we can look at the images of all the kids as simply a wide assortment of stories told by a photographer and her models, intrepreted by the viewer, supported by the arrangement of light and subject in the frame just like every other image. As the photographer, my intent is/was not important . But at the time, I was trying to make a “serious” portrait of the kids, especially my daughter, not the Hallmarky phony photographs of an imagined childhood. The irony is that the Kid Pictures have turned out to be a different type of reality, fictional perhaps but still based in the idea of light hitting a subject and reflecting back onto film. Still based on the fact that my daughter was posing for the camera, honing her acting skills, but mustering up real emotions.
To see more of the Kid Picture Portfolio, go to: http://www.janetneuhauser.com/kid-pictures/
Apr 5, 2014 | Blog
Why is the word selfie so distasteful to me? I am not a stranger to the self portrait; I have made them regularly since 1978. But what is the difference between a selfie and a self-portrait? The selfie is a quickie, in this quick world of ours. It is a snapshot in best superficial sense of the word, the selfie is an ad; a Facebook post, a few quick likes, it does not linger. The self-portrait is slow food. It simmers then surfaces in the strangest of ways. It reveals itself slowly and asks more questions than it answers. Bragging rights do not exist in self-portrait. More often, the self-portrait is embarrassing and can come with apologies and disclaimers. Self-portraits exist usually in editions of 1. Self-portraits are not big sellers, at least not while the photographer/artist is alive. (I can attest to this. I had a show of 40 self-portraits and sold one).
I have read that the world would be a better place, if everyone, from the worst possible lowest form of human kind to the best most incredible person, all got four hugs a day. Perhaps the selfie is an electronic hug. I admit that I do make selfies. I point and shoot the iphone and get a tiny little fix, a second of instant gratification. I like that electronic hug. I make a little connection; I get a little shock of recognition. It feels good. But then I get off the internet and it feels even better to work on an idea, make a self-portrait, print an image, a beautiful, rich print to put on the wall and contemplate. To ask some unanswered questions about myself. I hope that I am not too old school about the selfie vs. self-portrait controversy. I ask only that when people point and shoot and make a selfie, they try a little harder to make an image that is not superficial. We all have the need to create reproductions of ourselves and the iphone selfie makes it too easy. I think photography should not be taken so lightly; it should be difficult; the self-portraits we make especially should be difficult.
That said, here are two images made of me by me. Does one seem more “selfie” than the other?
Feb 7, 2014 | Blog
The Pinhole Project will reach five hundred images in the next few weeks and at an average exposure of three weeks each, that is a lot of light and time captured in these little metal cans on pieces of black and white enlarging paper over the last year and a half. Many people have done more than one image and more than half the images in the project are by the digital photography students at the high school where I teach. April Surgent, a Seattle based glass artist, took several pinhole cameras to Antarctica this past fall. She experimented with four hole cameras, multiple pinholes and two day exposures in the brilliant windy landscape full of ice. Her ruminations and images are here. http://www.aprilsurgent.com/2/post/2013/11/slowed-down-to-see-more.html
The Project continues to capture me, I rarely see a long exposure pinhole image that does not amaze me with its wondrous ability to both record reality and transform it. Many people do not recognize the place where they “took” or as I say, placed, the camera at first. These long exposures create a landscapes where the sun continues to rise and set, making a trail of light arched across the sky. The tidal waters become a flat plane, as if the tide creates no movement as it goes in and out. The streets are empty, even the lights of the cars at night are not recorded. People, because they move so quickly, are not recorded at all. And the colors! Though we have been using the same Black and White enlarging paper (which is almost gone), the colors vary wildly from oranges and yellows to cyans, browns and greens. People often ask how much each image is enhanced after scanning and the answer is almost no enhancement takes place. The image is scanned, inverted in Photoshop, sometimes brightened and then saved. For some reason, dust is a problem and often a dust and scratches filter is applied. I am beginning to believe that the length of exposure coupled with the climate during the exposure accounts for some of the color that is recorded.
I will feature a few of the best ones here, and if you have the time, take a look at the entire Archive. Right now we are working on a way to be able to search the Archive for a particular person; please bear with us until this minor technological glitch is solved. The Archive continues to evolve and as it grows, the hope is that it will become more and more manageable instead of less so.
The Pinhole Project is a non-profit community based program open to anyone regardless of age, income and photography experience. It is financed solely by donations. We need tape (especially electrical and two sided scotch tape), Altoids tins, BW enlarging paper, black mat spray paint. We are happy to take donations of money via the Pay Pal site. If you have any of the above items to spare, contact me via this website about donating.
The featured image is by Eric Reidel, a Seattle based pinhole photographer who has made several images.
The images below are by Brenda Aguilar, Ana Bucy and Hana Heminway
Brenda duct taped her camera under a bench in downtown Seattle where it remained undetected for two weeks. Ana made her image in a round Tabasco sauce can and Hana made hers in a very leaky tea tin. The damage from the water looked so good on Hana’s that we decided to keep it that way and not try to repair it.
Jan 27, 2014 | Blog
On the trip to the Lost Coast last August I made some exposures with my 4 x 5 pinhole camera on color negative film. I started the exposure as soon as it was mostly dark and ended it (except for a few late wakeups) as the sun rose, about seven hours. Because I had to leave the camera out all night, mostly unattended, choosing spots was difficult. The best of the batch is one from the deck of a hotel in downtown Tomales, a quiet little town. I love the softness of the pinhole night image. I love the softness of night photography in general, everything is muted and slow. I am not interested in the the hyper-realistic world, as seen in many apps and programs and a lot of work done at night now. I am interested in capturing just what is out there before the camera and I relish the chance to take my time and set up the shot. The fact that in one night, I make one image only intrigues me. In Seattle, in the city, it is difficult to leave a camera out all night unattended. I am trying to let go of my fear of this and just do it. This long exposure night work on film is for me a way to combine much of what I love about photography: the unexpected, the use of film, pinhole photography, color, long exposures.
This image made in Tomales, is one of the seven photographs that are in the exhibition at the Bainbridge Island Art Museum, http://www.biartmuseum.org/exhibitions/twelve-years-in-the-woods-arts-studio-gallery The show will be up until March 5th. Two other images in the show were also made on the Lost Coast on film with the pinhole camera but the exposures were much shorter and made just as it was getting dark. They all have the same thing in common: a feeling that is dreamlike and unreal but very real at the same time.
Jan 26, 2014 | Blog
About four months ago, I posted an anonymous pinhole both on this website and on Facebook. I had received the camera in the mail, with no note, no return address, no postmark. Just a brilliant orange and cyan landscape, foreign to me, mysterious. The stamps had a black marker running across them, as if the package had been hand canceled. On Facebook, no one claimed the image as their own. This beautiful, impressionistic landscape, orange and green and brown languished in my inbox. I felt uneasy. I did not recognize the place with its wide open space, no trees, beautiful light.
Quite unconnected about a month ago, my daughter decided to retrieve a pinhole camera left out near Tomales, California, en route to the Lost Coast of Northern California during last summer’s road trip. The camera had been placed on the Dillon Beach road, tucked into some rocks, that were surrounded by poison oak. We tiptoed around in the heat placing the camera up high in a cleft. I took a photograph of the view with my DSLR and we got out of there. In search of the camera, my daughter found an AA meeting in among the rocks and no camera in the rock cleft. She took an iPhone photo of the view and we both realized the anonymous image that had come in through the mail was almost certainly the one from the rocks. Maybe one of the AA members sent it back but whoever you are, dear good Samaritan we thank you. Below are the three images: the iPhone image by Jess Tampa, my cursory shot of the view and the pinhole image from the camera placed there last summer . How long did it expose? Did it fall and was picked up by a person who read the plea I had left: this is a camera, if found please send back to the Pinhole Project. Please examine the images below and see if you think it is the image from that place, way out among the rocks near the small town of Tomales. There is another camera still waiting to be retrieved, under a bridge, close to the same place. Anyone going to the Lost Coast anytime soon?
The first image is the iPhone image made early in the morning by my daughter. The second image was shot with my DSLR last August and the third is the pinhole image exposed for several weeks (exact time unknown).
Dixie cups on a potter’s wheel: my first pinhole photograph, circa 1994
Butter knife on a napkin: paper negative with positive. First pinhole photograph with an 8x loupe attached to a camera, circa 1996
The Point of A Pencil, from the series, LoupeHoles
