Pinhole photography | bookbinding | poetry

When talking to Chris Tancock recently, I promised to come up with a list of photographers' websites which, in my own opinion, are especially worth visiting. Not all those on my list are pinholers but most, in fact, are. A blog seems an eminently good place to publish this so here goes. I have no doubt missed off many wonderful artists and they are in no particular order. The comments are mine...

Pinhole
Katie Cooke - wonderful thought-provoking pinhole self-portraits.
Gregg Kemp - inventive and insightful work, especially his lunar images.
Sean Duggan - polished and intriguing pinhole images.
Wayne Belger - the medium is the message, mind-blowing and fascinating cameras and images.
Bethany de Forest - finely-crafted, astonishing scenarios and dioramas.
Patrick Caloz - master of the townscape, look out for his Venice series. Stunning landscapes too.
Pierre-Olivier Boulant - continually interesting representations of the everyday.
Scott Speck - breathtaking super-wide images of architecture.
Danny Kalkhoven - strong colour work.
Chris Ellinger - the master of Zone Plate.

Non-pinhole
Dorothy Shoes - quirky, imaginative, engaging, full of fun.
Bill Schwab - beautiful minimalism.
Katie Cooke - perceptive, crafted lensed portraits.
Susan Burnstine - toy camera images full of soul and texture.
Ken Merfeld - words cannot express the staggeringly emotive effect of his work. Superlatives are insufficient.

This summer I have started working on a new series of images which I hope will explore and reproduce the thoughts and emotions experienced near water and, in particular, the sea. Tentatively entitled "Return to deep", this is the first draft of the first of the group made at the small beach of Aber Bach near Fishguard on the Welsh coast.

Working on the prints from my recent trip, I have become more and more fascinated by this curious, rounded copper, beautiful in shape, texture and situation. Most striking is the way that the unexpected and uncontrollable pinhole quirks - the flare and distortion - seem to have seized upon and made visible the atmosphere, at once wonderful and strange, which one feels being there but could never put into words.

One of the wonderful sculptural objects in the garden of Dyffryn Fernant. I loved the way the water in the finely-balanced still reflected the sky and made it part of the garden itself.

I've just returned from a stormy, wet seven days in the West of Wales. I had the joy of spending another week in the wonderful wild garden at Dyffryn Fernant.

Equally inspiring was an unexpected encounter with local landscape photographer, Chris Tancock, who was exhibiting in the small coastal town of Newport. Chris' work comprises bold and dramatic landscapes of the Pembrokeshire coast seen with a vision and sensitivity beyond the norm. He manages to portray the wide, recognisable view which renders a powerful landscape image accessible, but at the same time sprinkles his work with detail and subtle hints of the deeper feel of the Celtic coastline. He confesses that may only make a couple of new colour works a year. This apparently minuscule output bears witness to his restrained shutter finger, though what he does produce employs an astonishing colour palette and shows a truly discerning eye. His monochrome images, too, are full of the power and drama of the coast, again in his own individual style.

Chris makes his living from selling his work direct and through galleries. It is heartening to know that there is a market for good photographic output such as his. Samples can be seen on his website which, of course, can never do justice to the actual prints.

I have just heard that four of my images have been included in the next volume of Dark Chamber, published by Urban Fox Press. The book will be available from the Urban Fox site from 18th July 2008.

Will Parfitt, the publisher of "Into The Further Reaches" has kindly given permission for me to quote the full text of Claudine Whiting Bloomfield's wonderful poem. The anthology can be bought online from PS Avalon

"The Songbirds"

We are all wounded,
of course we are.
Were it not so
we would all fly
heavenwards,
a fantastic fluttering,
and burn up
in a glorious blaze.

But something leadens our wings
and makes us adjust
and dip
away from the glorious sun...
an unexpected current,
a bent feather,
forgotten scar tissue.

And each morning,
despite ourselves
we rise again...
finding a current,
creating a current,
to take us skywards.

And each day we hear
horseshoes clattering on the road
worn a little more
and echoing less
then new again and humming
tin-sharp and quick in the air.

And each day the wind
plays her instruments differently
as the trees grow higher
and the branches bend
a new arc towards the earth.

And so I say,
as you preen your feathers
so straight and perfect,
it is the bent one
that keeps us here
where the symphony is playing.

Claudine Whiting Bloomfield

I have had several requests in the f295.org pinhole photography forum to elaborate on the thought processes behind the creation of this series of photographs and also to show the setups used. Fortunately, along the way I have catalogued my methods photographically and so have some photographs to show the mechanics behind some of the images. There is nothing particularly complex about any of them.

The starting point for the series came about from poems and articles in Resurgence magazine and a book of poetry I bought based on a review in one of the issues "Into The Further Reaches" published by PS Avalon. This anthology contains many dozens of thought-provoking and inspiring contemporary poems celebrating the spiritual journey. One poem in particular by Claudine Whiting Bloomfield called "The Songbirds" led me over the course of several months to consider the parallels of flight and the quest for spiritual meaning and enlightenment. My reading of her work is that we hold ourselves back from true spiritual fulfillment with our attachment to the joys and sensuous delights of the physical plane, or as she describes it "here/ where the symphony is playing".

My aim was to explore this parallel visually and show what I see as this ambiguity in our human outlook which pulls in two directions, both equally attractive. The use of pinhole with its characteristic unsharpness and tonal unpredictability helps I hope in gracing the work with a sensuous material presence to contrast with the ethereal spiritual impulse. The choice of background material (used horticultural fleece) also gives an almost tangible texture through the pinhole. The long exposures used - between 5 minutes and one hour - allowed the items within each set to be moved, removed and substituted to create different levels of transparency. Much experimentation was needed as the opacity of a displaced object would vary according to its tonal value relative to the background used and any other elements with which it might overlap.

I have used a number of symbols throughout the series; the egg is fairly obvious as a starting point or origin; the bird equally so; the candle should be taken as a symbol of the creator or the destination of the spiritually enlightened; Icarus as a symbol is intended not to be a literal comparison but rather a metaphor for the desire to escape and the ultimate failure which comes about when the physical exhilaration of flight overtakes the purpose of our being airborne; the fleece, as well as providing a tonal quality, was intended as an echo of a shroud or perhaps a white robe.

The physical setups of some of the images can be seen below. Beyond a few natural materials gathered mainly from the garden over the last few months and common workshop tools like woodworker's clips there is little that many photographers would not possess. For me one of the joys of this whole process has been the production of often surprising results with very basic and common items.

Dream of flight - release






Dream of flight - the breakthrough


Dream of flight - soaring


Dream of flight - clipped

Dream of flight - clipped

This whole series and this image in particular was inspired by a beautiful poem "The Songbirds" by Claudine Whiting Bloomfield.

Dream of flight - soaring

Dream of flight - release

Opening the box of secrets

Icarus waiting

Inventory