April 2015

Coastal Pinholes

Martha Casanave

For me, photography is like magic. One of the reasons for my fascination with the 19th century is, in fact, the invention of photography. But the pinhole principle, the camera obscura, which far predates the ability to “fix” an image, is even more mysterious and magical. Its allure is its very simplicity: a box with a tiny hole creating an image-- no lens, no viewfinder, no shutter. An optical phenomenon, unadorned by modern technology. Pinhole photographers don’t “shoot;” they don’t “capture” images. There is no snap, no click, no buzz. There is no viewfinder. We don’t need batteries. We uncover the pinhole and the film receives an image, slowly and in silence.

It took me over thirty years of living on California’s central coast to turn a camera on the natural scene, as I have always been an indoor portrait photographer. In 2000, I began visiting the shore on a regular basis, weighed down, like an inexperienced traveler, with too much baggage: 4 x 5 pinhole box camera, thermos of coffee, big bag of props, shower curtain for sitting on wet sand, and more.

I put the box directly on the sand or rocks, and stabilized it with sandbags. The directive to myself: I may place the camera anywhere a crab can go (certainly never on a tripod). The wide-angle, distorting view of most pinhole cameras is thus utilized best, from low angles. Also, working in this way takes me back to my childhood, when I played with toys, and lived closer to the ground and further from reality. The near infinite depth of field characteristic of pinhole cameras allows me to play with visual elements of near and far. The time dilations --long, long exposures-- allow water to become cloud, person to become ghost.

As the coastal work progressed, I became bored with the “natural” scene, and began to add a solitary, mysterious figure in 19th century attire: bowler hat, frock coat, cane or umbrella. This person gave the work an ambiguous, narrative quality and thus made it more interesting for me. I continued the series for seven more years, asking myself: Who is this person? Where did he come from? What or who did he leave behind? What’s he looking for?

In 2013 I took up the pinhole camera again, to explore the more populated areas of our coastline—primarily the tourist attractions—Cannery Row, Fisherman's Wharf, the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I wondered what “pinhole vision” could see that ordinary eyesight couldn't. For this work, more grounded in reality than the previous body of work; I allowed myself to utilize a tripod, and hand colored the prints with oil pastels.

I am continually surprised and delighted by the pinhole's version of such everyday, sometimes kitschy reality.

KANCHI - The Quiet Place

Ryuijie

In 2006, Camille Lenore and I took a shared love of photography underwater. The underwater world is a place of silence, allowing for personal meditation and also for the opportunity to get very lose to the subjects we photograph, especially as we dive without scuba gear.

The refracted, diffused and ghostly underwater light and the monochrome palette allow us to create more abstract images than are usually seen in conventional underwater photography. We are sometimes hard pressed to identify the creatures suspended in each frame. What we find so intriguing are the shapes and forms of life and the quality of light that exist only underwater.

Each photograph is hand made using a platinum/palladium mix-a printing process that goes back 150 years. No two prints are exactly the same, and once the print is processed, it is absolutely permanent.

We are not naturalists. We are not fishermen. We have a deep respect for the oceans and for the life that inhabits them. We bring home only what the camera sees.