Mar 3, 2021 | Blog
At first it was wonderful to just meet Gio (John) Apruzzese, and to know there was another human close by in this deserted lonely town. I was curious about his writing. He was very easy to talk to and the books in Lo Studio provided fodder for our talk. Turns out Gio can write and does mostly at night. I am a morning person, up with the light, looking to shoot. That was the perfect arrangement, for two people experiencing Civita at the same time. We would meet up for dinner, the end of my day, the beginning of his. And talk we would with good food and wine.
After the fellowship Gio connected me with an artist in Lodz, Poland, Bronka Nowicka with whom he had worked and after seeing my work, she wrote a piece on photography and on Gio’s poems along with her personal history of photography and time and suggested that we collaborate. You could not avoid the idea of time when in Civita surrounded by the ghosts who woke me up at night, trodding the cobblestones. Perfect for the pandemic we wove our thoughts together swerving and darting and bouncing around. Heartfelt emails passed between us while alone. I looked forward to what Gio and Bronka had to say.
Spo-tkanie or
We-aving was published recently in
Powidoki, (Afterimage), an art and science journal from the Strzeminski Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz. Here is a link that describes the journal:
https://powidoki.asp.lodz.pl/o-nas. This is the link to the text and images in Powidok:
https://jpapruzzese.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Bronka_Nowicka_Powidoki-nr.4_v1-1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR12ksU7T–rRQFjQy4pby_4adcqecGgGvQu8_V9Gu9zNQGCajOZk73aniYAs always thank you for reading this post. This is an excellent addition to my fellowship. I am grateful.
Jan 23, 2021 | Blog
I am a lucky person. Mostly. Since the pandemic began, I have been staying home, like most people and as most of you know, I shattered the femur in my right leg, August 24th. It took almost four months for that to heal. In the meantime, my friends have been very good to me and while I have not done a lot of new pinhole work, I have been well taken care of and been well fed. A website designer and friend, Angela Prosper thought I should definitely upgrade my almost ten year old website. She is so right and she designed a new one for me; She is a great designer who is visually smart and creative and also has the ability to explain the technical “stuff” to an techno-idiot like me. Go to her website and you can see for yourself: rainydayprosper.com
On the new website there is a place for you to sign up to get an email each time I post something new (probably about twice a month). I have a new Mailchimp account.and will send you an email {if you fill out the newsletter form) when I do a new blog post. . What else have I been shooting all these long months of the pandemic? I turned to flowers and have begun to photograph them with my 8 x10 inch pinhole camera on color negative film. I found a box of 8 x 10 color negative film that I won in a raffle several years ago. I also been given some awesome tins for making new long exposure cameras. I made two into cameras and are still exposing–one is a lunch box, (it has become a 2 hole camera) several are beautiful round tins that were old tobacco cans and one is a big potato chip can that has become a three hole camera and is exposing as we speak along with the lunch box camera. I dreamed about doing pinhole portraits of people. So along with this new website, I will post a few photographs that I have made in the last year and hopefully snag you for my new email list Thank you for reading this post. Oh and I made some long exposure pinholes of the parking lot where I live in Sodo and was in a show that was featured on zoom. Here are some images that are recent. The featured image is called Portrait of Jenny Riffle because well it is her.
Flowers: double exposure
Flowers as they died.
Three hole camera from My. Doorway
Mom and Dad’s Grave
Portrait of Jenny Riffle
The Sun Trail as It Moved Southward
My Front Door: 2 hole camera
An Array of Nine Cameras: The Shunpike Window
Two Hole Camera from the Shunpike Window
Apr 30, 2020 | Portfolio
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.
Jan 16, 2020 | Blog
Well, I have been working steadily on all the images from Civita. So many I do not know what is good and what is not any more. I would like to add at least 10 more images so I can get around 25 uploaded and make a portfolio. What have I learned so far?
- My scanner is dusty. I spend a lot of time cleaning it and getting rid of dust on the files. I love working with Photoshop and really do not mind the dust. It is a way to zoom in to about 300 percent and look at all the details. It makes me homesick for Civita. But in order for it to be good photograph, for me, the dust has to go.
- I love the exaggerated color. It is so powerful this color. I am not enhancing in Photoshop. There is no need to. And while in this surreal place, the colors did pop out and make me stop sometimes and catch my breath.
- I need to return to Civita in a different season. In the winter when I was there, a big fog hovered over us. That mixed with rain, made colors pop. A different season will mean different light. I would love to see how the evening light looks on film..
Of course I have learned so many things working on this project other than the three items above For example a question I am seeking the answer to: What makes a good diptych? How does one shoot to ensure that what you get is what you saw? There are many more questions to be answered but this is not the place.
I feel incredibly lucky to have these images. I am often surprised by them and do not think that they were made by me. But I did this, I took these images. People have asked me, why take photographs that are jumbled together and not “real”. They are not always easy to look at I understand that sentiment. But they are also different than the millions of other photographs taken of this touristy place. The fact is that they are very real. Everyone who knows this place, Civita, will recognize the streets, the cliffs, the buildings, the church, the fog. I did my best to simply take photographs as I saw them. Thanks for looking.
The featured image is the entrance to the tunnel that runs under Civita.
Other possible titles:
- Etruscan Caves
- Street View
- San Donato #5
- Lone Cypress
- Street View, Landscape and Tiled Roofs
- From the Garbage Storage Area
- Apartments
- Cats
- San Donato Disappears
- Gate and Street on the Edge
- The Valley and the Tunnel Entrance
- Fog in the Valley from the Santa Maria Gate (Single Image)
Jan 14, 2020 | Blog
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).
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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)
- Door
- Patio on the Edge
- San Donato #1
- Street, Buildings, Valley
- By Giovanni’s Stairs
- Partly Real
- Lions Gate with the Gate of Santa Maria
- An Imagined Space
- Arch and Fog
- Landscape with Buildings
- Walk to the Cliffs at Sunset (single image)
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