Pinhole (or lensless) cameras allow for the exploration of the passage of time in one frame of film, a condensation that leads to a different view of a landscape. The interplay between the static elements of the scene (rocks, trees, vegetation) and the moving elements (sky, clouds, water) is endlessly fascinating to me. The loss of crispness, of “resolution,” which is an inevitable part of pinhole and Holga photography, is not a worry. This is how my aging eyes see the world, becoming more and more a pictorialist as I go.
I caught the “pinhole bug” in April of 2017, after seeing Oregon photographer Zeb Andrews’ color pinhole work at Blue Moon Camera & Machine. After many years of looking at these images, the process made sudden sense. I went into the pinhole world with a dose of healthy obsession.
One of the biggest challenges of pinhole cameras is understanding the extreme wide angles one is dealing with. It took some time to get used to such angles, where setting the camera a couple of inches away from the foreground still got me an enormous amount of “photographic real estate.”
I keep thinking about how strongly enthralled to this pinhole process I have become. One of the things I love about it is I now re-look at my entire world thinking what it would look like in a pinhole exposure. I love the fact that pinhole cameras have made me want to visit and photograph every accessible inch of coast at home on Whidbey and other places nearby. I know that I’m still new enough at this that I am hooked to the more obvious subject matters: moving waters, clouds in the sky, county fairs.
These images were taken with several pinhole cameras, including Terrapin 6x6, Terrapin 6x9, Ondu 6x6 Rise III, Reality So Subtle 6x6, Holga pinhole, Zero Image 6x6, Harman Titan 4x5 pinhole, Pinhole Flyer 6x6, Noon Multiformat Pinhole.
Medium format was a door opened by the Holga. It is my favorite film format, especially as 6x6. This series was shot with a Fuji 645zi, a Lomography LCA 120, and an ancient Zeiss Ikon Nettar 6x6.
I started my love affair with plastic cameras through a basic Holga S. I love the square format of the medium-format negative. I love the quirkiness of each and every one of my Holgas. With time, I have added other plastic beauties to my arsenal and have learned ways to hack them and trick them into ever more surprising results. The sheer simplicity of these cameras’ mechanisms allows me to superimpose images in camera, allowing for a kind of random magic.
I love the Japanese concept of wabi sabi, the beauty in imperfection and earthiness, ‘the cracks and crevices and rot and other marks that time and weather and use leave behind. The minute details that give something character’. My plastic cameras are the perfect vehicle for a wabi sabi vision.
I want these images to be the photographic equivalent of folk art. I want the imperfect, I want bright colors, a little misalignment, evidence of a human hand. I love the art of Marc Chagall and I aspire to achieving some of his inspired vision and his exuberance.
Holga + IR film + IR filter
Like many photographers, I’m an incurable nostalgic. To photograph that which is left of the past, is a way of preserving it, of keeping it alive even if it’s just the paper of a photograph. I feel compelled to document the disappearing world (1970s?) before it goes. If there is wild, saturated color involved, so much the better. As an immigrant to the U.S., I am intrigued by the concept and territory of Americana, that which used to be gaudy and kitsch eroded into a melancholic, quiet landscape.
Beacuse I want to preserve the remnants of bygone times, I prefer to do it using film cameras and film formats that best match the esthetics of the time. This particular portfolio was shot several cameras, Holga 120 and 135 and Half-frame plastic cameras, a Lomography LCA120, an old Pentax K 1000 along with various types of films, some of them long expired.
I have been inspired by the work of Walker Evans, William Eggleston, William Christenberry, Stephen Shore. I feel a natural affinity for these photographers who found a lyrical way to portray the signage, advertising, diners, storefronts of Middle America.
When I look back at my first “American” images taken fifteen years ago, I notice that what started mostly as street photography (lit neon, motel next to motel in Central Ave. in Albuquerque) moved to road photography, to detour photography, incorporating landscape, moving away from iconography.
Many of the things I saw, some of the places I drove by are now gone. I cannot go back and re-photograph them. The reward has been the experience itself, being on the road with a vague destination and no schedule. In a way, the Route 66 part of my “built-on landscape” project has been a doorway for many other projects, knowing there are other highways, other roads rich in rural and suburban idiosyncracies.
My intention is for my images to reflect the way I feel for the American road and its built-on landscape: without judgements, with a great deal of tenderness.
More and more I find myself fascinated by the possibilities of night film photography. Combined with my love of old storefronts, I am imagining this series will be growing.
This was the original format, the one with which I started. I have gone through countless cameras by now, currently holding on to my Canon A-1, a Minolta X-700, and a newly-discovered LCA-wide.
Images taken with the Mamiya 6 Medium Format camera, with its 75mm standard lens.
