Jun 6, 2017 | Blog
I am pleased to announce that six of my Pinhole Landscapes will be on view this summer at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (bima.org) in a show called Women in Photography; I am one of ten women being exhibited. When Greg Robinson, the curator asked me to be in the show, he wondered how being a woman had influenced my work. It was an apropos question. I have long wanted to photograph the landscape but not in the way it had historically been done. I did not want to work in the same vein copying the greats, like William Henry Jackson, Timothy O’Sullivan and yes even Ansel Adams. And it seemed that all the greats had been men. Making the urban night photographs (Nighttime) had inspired me to try the landscape in a kind of crooked way (see asterisk below). I wanted color, mostly because I love the way the long exposures at night shifted the colors and recorded a certain kind of movement. I knew I could not get that feeling during the day with the a lens camera. The pinhole camera allowed for both a long exposure and color. I have owned a 4 x 5 pinhole camera for years with which I had mostly made still lifes (loupe-holes). I began with an all night long exposure, and it was a perfect negative (a happy accident I later discovered). I scanned that negative and printed it digitally. There was something about that image (Tomales), a seven hour exposure that made me realize that I could do the landscape both at night and during the day. In a crooked way, with the pinhole, with film. The long exposures, in the wind, rain, snow, darkness, make the images soft; the pinhole records light and time like no other type of camera. Mostly when I am making images with the that camera, I am pushing the exposure envelope hoping to get enough light on the film, hoping for the image that I see before me, but it is always turns out differently once it is developed. Sometimes I am constrained by the available light. Sometimes I am in love with the light and the moment and simply hope for the best. All in all, I am well into making the landscape my own way. I am happy not to see the image immediately. Not to be able to actually look through the camera. I love the mystery and the uncertainty. The crookedness of it.
I am beginning to understand that photography is as much about time as it is about light and the pinhole records both. Each image seems to happen against the odds. Usal Beach, below is an example. Taken on the Lost Coast in Northern California, on a dreary, gray evening. It felt creepy, with the abandoned campground, dried-up river to the ocean, high crashing surf, strange noises one could hear but not see. A whole town once existed on this site. The three mile drive on a treacherous dirt road keeps most people away. Yet on the evening I made the image, it seems there had been many people on the beach that day, there were lots of footsteps in the sand. No one was there when this image was made. The waves were close with a steep drop off yet the surf looks deceptively calm in the exposure. While making the image, I had little hope it would turn out. When I saw the negative a month later, I knew I had something.
Usal Beach, CA
I don’t mean to take creepy landscapes but somehow end up in creepy places. Usal Beach was followed by several more images but the one below taken near the Dyke Access Road on the Columbia River speaks to the same aesthetic. Cottonwood Tree, Columbia River was made with the camera perched on a plastic box near the water. It started to rain about 15 minutes into the exposure. A big ship came up the river, in from Astoria. It moved slowly and I decided to make the exposure the length of time it took the ship to come past the camera, about an hour. The cottonwood tree was a victim of flooding and erosion from a very wet winter. I was surprised how it seemed to be growing out of the water. The wake from many boats on the river must have created that effect because the tree looked like it was growing out of the mud when the photograph was made. Again, none of the boats appear in the photograph, because the exposure is too long to record their speed.
Columbia River, WA
There are four other images in the show. One made three years ago, the others within the last year. I hope you can stop by BIMA. The show will be up the entire summer. The work of the ten women included in the show is diverse and interesting. If you are in the Northwest, the opening is on Saturday, June 24th, from 2-5 pm for friends of friends of friends, all are welcome.
Featured Image: The Little Klickitat River
Feb 24, 2017 | Blog, Pinhole Wedding Photography
This past fall, I was invited to the wedding of my dear friends’ daughter, Rachel. I went not only for Rachel but for her mother, my friend Connie who passed away 3+ years ago. Rachel got married on Cape Cod, head over heels in love. I know this because a year earlier, after knowing the groom to be for only a month, she told me he was the one. Truly love at first sight. When Rachel asked me if I would take some photographs at the wedding, I laughed. I used to shoot weddings for money when I was young but quit the practice as soon as I was able to. I am not good at shooting those types of events and I say hats off to the professionals who are able to capture moment after moment. Rachel and Nick’s wedding was not going to like a normal one and I said I would be happy to shoot a pinhole image or two, one for sure, the length of their ceremony, what ever amount of time that was. In retrospect it was actually quite hubristic to imagine that such an exposure might work in the bright fall sun of Cape Cod. And I had no idea where they were actually getting married. But I packed my 4 x 5 pinhole camera and some color negative film loaded into holders and hoped for the best. The entire trip was bittersweet, full of laughter and tears. Missing Connie all the while but feeling her presence strong. I know she would have loved every minute of it.
The first image was made the night before the wedding-warm beautiful night on a Cape Cod beach. We ate great food, talked, laughed, watched the sun go down and yes, those are all people on either side of the sun. We dug our bare feet into the warm sand, everyone and everything aglow in that orange light. I was fortunate to get there in time for the setting sun and set up the camera and enjoyed
Rachel and Nick were married by a beautiful pond near Truro; The weather was perfect and the light beautiful. The exposures were so long, but people are recognizable in the blur. The landscape is intact. In those 45 minutes there was the magic that happens when two people come together in love and celebrate that with their friends and family. It turns out this was shortest exposure of the four that I took: the first image exposed for about an hour until well after the sun went down. The dinner image exposed for about two hours while incredible food was eaten; the lawn image exposed in the gray light of late twilight for about an hour. Rachel was a beautiful bride, and it so incredible to see someone I have known her whole life become an elegant, young woman. Here is an homage to Rachel and Nick and their love, so glad I got to make these images because you committed to each other.
The Party the Night Before the Wedding.
The ceremony.
After the wedding, everyone went to the home of Nick’s Aunt where we ate and danced and celebrated the beautiful couple. The lawn photograph exposed until it got too dark to see, about an hour.
Then, the meal! Fantastic food with lovely wonderful people. This exposure was about two hours. And finally when the dancing began, I closed the shutter.
Nov 28, 2016 | Blog
About six months ago I submitted some of my new pinhole work to the ƒ/D website call for work for a book on pinhole photography. A passion for pinhole photography by Kier Silensky gave birth to a book that will have ninety-nine images by pinhole photographers from all over the world. My image, Under the Tracks/Inside the Box was accepted to be a part of this book. Now the website Kier maintains, fslashd.com has started a Kickstarter site for the project in order to print the book as beautifully as possible.
On the Kickstarter site, Kier states, “while photo books are a great way to collect photography, the pinhole photography community is greatly under-represented on bookshelves. In response, we ran a call for entry asking photographers to show us what they’ve seen through a pinhole. We received an overwhelming response from around the world, and selected 99 photos to publish in a book created to celebrate pinhole photography. In all, the book features 60 black & white and 39 color photos. The photographs represent techniques that demonstrate the “pinhole look” in general as well as the unique ways in which pinhole works with motion and time, bent film planes, infrared, and other techniques and formats.”
I personally still do not have a name for the camera that was constructed to make the image that was accepted for the book. Basically it is a larger (2 x 2 x 2 feet) pinhole camera with a round hole placed right below the pinhole into which a digital camera fits to record the pinhole image inside the box. A kind of mini-camera obscura room, aka Abelardo Morell, one of my heroes. I am thrilled to be a part of this book and hope you will consider donating to the Kickstarter project so this book can be realized. You can go to the site and see for the project for yourself: the-f-d-book-of-pinhole.
I have made several images with this box as well as experimented with placing the DSLR inside of other giant camera obscurae and capturing the image that is made. I am not sure where this work is leading me but it’s been fun! I love the idea of making a pinhole image and capturing it with digital. Below I have added the image for the book and one other I’ve made with this camera.
Under the Tracks/Inside the Box
Outside the Sunny Arms/Inside the box
Oct 10, 2016 | Blog
Over two years ago, the artists at the Sunny Arms, the building where I live and work, agreed to expose pinhole cameras out their windows for 90 days, from the Summer Solstice to the Fall Equinox. The results were so spectacular that everyone agreed to expose cameras until we had covered each season. The project came to be called, Out There: Pinhole Images from the Sunny Arms Artists. Over the course of the next two years (the time it took us to expose all four seasons), over 100 images were made from our windows. The residents changed, but the pinhole cameras continued to be exposed. You can see an update on this project in this blog, http://www.janetneuhauser.com/out-there-an-update/ that was published in 2015.
When I heard about the public art project called City Panorama, I was inspired to submit the first season of Out There to it. Sponsored by Photographic Center Northwest, King County Metro and 4Culture, the project has placed hundreds of murals in the last six years on bus shelters throughout King County. I am pleased to announce that the Sunny Arms first season of Out There has been placed on a bus shelter on Beacon Avenue South and South Holly Street, just up Beacon Hill from our building. A great big thanks to all three organizations who have sponsored this wonderful project. A great way to make our bus shelters more inviting and show off the photography of so many people throughout King County.
On the Photographic Center NW website (pcnw.org) a description of the project is as follows:
The City Panorama Project began in 2010 when King County Metro, WA partnered with PCNW to expand the public art scene in Seattle and other cities in King County. As a way to incorporate art into everyday life, to beautify Seattle and other cities served by Metro, and to make new perspectives and ideas available to all, the City Panorama Project seeks photographic artwork that will accomplish these objectives while increasing the visibility of the photographic arts. Over 450 photo murals have been installed since the launch of this public art project in 2010. This annual project is funded through a 4Culture grant and now enters its sixth year.
So special thanks to the Sunny Arms artists who collaborated to make this project happen and to all the Seattle and King County organizations who also collaborated to beautify our county. I am honored to be a part of this. If you are in the neighborhood be sure to stop by “our” bus shelter and oh, don’t forget to take the bus much more often!
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: http://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….
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