I try to experience life, the spiritual as well as the mundane, on many levels. In nature there is the excitement that comes from feeling at one with creation. In the city I tune myself to people and the manmade rhythms of life. The harmonizing atmosphere I find at sacred places creates a bridge between the two. What I feel, see, and hear somehow come together in the multidimensional world. I glimpse the “essence of being”.


The many activities of everyday living keep me busy. When I pay attention I know who and what I am. When I really look at life, I am able to see a bigger world and enjoy my role in it. In these moments I feel the “essence of being”. Through the magic of it all I experience the fun as well as the seriousness of life.


As a photographer it is necessary to be very aware of one’s surroundings. Looking for images keeps me focused; the resulting photographs help me to remember.

-Edward Levinson

http://www.edophoto.com/state01_m.html

Photo Info:


Coffee High, Tokyo

Photo By: Edward Levinson


HP.2012.15.1092

I’ve often heard myself say that if I could make a photograph with just my eyes and brain and not this clumsy and noisy mechanical device, I would be very happy.  Using a pinhole camera comes closer to this ideal.

- Martha Casanave

Photo Info:

Man on Cliff - Coastal Pinholes

Photo By: Martha Casanave

HP.2012.15.767

Excerpt from:

Martha Casanave, “Interview”, Pinhole Journal, Vol. 3 #3 (1987): 2.

More Info:

Pinhole Photography: From Historic Technique to Digital Application

by: Eric Renner

My sewn body of work was created using large black and white silver prints produced from pinhole cameras. The images are captured on film by using either a 4x5 Leonardo pinhole camera or a pinhole camera made from a Tide detergent box. Both these cameras are modified to allow the attachment of a Polaroid 645 film back. Since the camera lacks a viewfinder, I rely on Polaroid Positive Negative 55 film to produce a positive ‘reference’ image–this particular Polaroid film also provides a black and white negative at the same time.

After the silver print is made, I build upon each print by using various art mediums such as painting, drawing, and image transfers. Often, multiple photographs are juxtaposed together to evoke narratives connecting one image to another, not unlike chapters in a book. I feel most comfortable photographing possessions associated with my home, family and everyday life. Occasionally, I incorporate hand or machine-sewn verses or writing into select areas of the print to act as dialog. The writings, both from personal journals and verses from popular 20th century poets, push the narrative capabilities of the image. All of my finished pieces are distinctive works on paper that move beyond the boundaries of a traditional photograph.

-Rebecca Sexton Larson

http://sextonlarson.com

Photo Info:

Mournful Widow

Photo By: Rebecca Sexton Larson

HP.2012.15.1252

The Trinity Site Atomic Bomb Test is not an image using X-ray film to photograph high-energy particles as they explode–it is probably the first pinhole image of the atomic bomb mushroom cloud in New Mexico, undoubtedly made with a view-camera with a pinhole attached to its lens board rather than a lens. 

With the advent of nuclear energy in the 1940s, pinhole cameras began to find their way into nuclear physics to image high-energy particles because it was discovered that a photographic lens absorbs rather than projects high-energy X-rays or gamma rays, whereas a pinhole will produce an image.

-Eric Renner

Photo Info:

Trinity Site Atomic Bomb Test

Photo By: Los Alamos National Laboratories 

HP.2012.15.775

Excerpt from:

Pinhole Photography: From Historic Technique to Digital Application

by: Eric Renner

INTERIOR / EXTERIOR is a project which started in 1996. By using a special of camera obscura technique I can capture into the same image with one long exposure both person, room and the reflection of external landscape. First I just have to transform the room into camera obscura and then photograph there by using normal lens camera and long exposures. 

-Marja Pirilä

www.marjapirila.com/interior_text.html

Photo Info:

Paula’s Room

Oulu, Finland

1996

Photo By: Marja Pirilä

HP.2012.15.876