Why Pinhole?

Given the range and freedom of digital camera equipment available why do I work with pinhole cameras?

I was on a road trip from Colorado to Indiana to teach beginning photography to school children for a summer workshop. Working with homemade cameras and low-tech pinhole technology is a great way to easily and quickly convey the basics of photography. Making photographs with a box and a pinhole using black and white paper negatives provides a natural way to introduce new photographers to the basics of how light works in conjunction with photographic materials.

Before the trip I made a number of new cameras and played with them to get to know them better. The artist Sarah Timberlake picked me up and we traveled primarily on US Route 36 towards Indianapolis and on to Portland, IN. As we were making our way across Middle America I was learning more about how these boxes worked and how I could work with them. This way of working and the images produced felt closer to the landscape I was making images of.

Over the course of this trip I fell in love with my wife, Sarah, that's another story. I also fell in love with the imagery I could produce with these low-tech cameras. There are limiting factors to what pinhole cameras can do and how they can do it. These limitations provide a freedom to explore what is in front of the camera. Working with these homemade cameras provided a freedom to shape the camera and one's photographic views to conform with a personal idea of perspective.

Photography is about making choices in how one constructs a view of the world. Much of it is an editing process that takes place. The photos I make with these pinhole cameras provide a selective worldview. The resultant images have a sense of being 'not quite in focus' - unresolved circles of confusion. Some have said, the views are reminiscent of just coming to a state of consciousness - waking up, not fully woken up - when the world 'out there' is taking shape, not yet fully formed.
This feels more real to me than the concrete moment precisely captured by the lens, certainly more visually distorted, but truer to the materials that form our reality.