Archive
The Art of Pinhole Photography
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[Mar 08, 2007]
Interview PV: Your resume lists a wide variety of occupations and jobs you have had, including treasure hunting, investigating the disappearance of children, scuba diving instructor (you are a dive master), studio and touring musician, machinist, and yes - a manicurist. How did you wander into the art world, and especially pinhole photography?WMB: Well I’ve been creating assemblage pieces for most of my life and had shows with it before I was creating cameras. The photography began when Brian Booth, a car photographer in Los Angeles was doing a shoot using a pinhole camera. It was unstable unpredictable and a pain to use. I told him I would make him a camera. What he ended up with was a functional piece of art that was stable, predictable and easy to use. After that first camera, I became obsessed with capturing the light and time of subjects I wanted to explore with my creations. PV: Your art is very conceptual. The location and subjects of your pinhole images are often wedded to the design of the camera you make to capture these images. Can you describe how these concepts originate? WMB: Most of the time the original concept comes from something I want to learn about or investigate within myself. Other times it’s a flash in my peripheral that passes by at 80mph then I slow down, go back to the flash to understand what it is. With all the projects it starts with the subject. I visualize my relationship with the subject and how we work together, which is the photo. After I have a clear view of the photo, I start to create the camera to be part of our relationship, so that the beginning and the end the subject is the primary focus.  PV: What artists (or others) have had the most influence on your art? What contemporary artists do you most admire? WMB: My visions and concepts for my work are fed from many different sources. From literature, it can range from Chomsky to Dr. Seuss (I’m kind of a book freak). Some of the most influential has been Osho (mainly Tantra, The Book of Secrets and Courage; The Art of Living Dangerously), Blake, Gandhi, Pablo Neruda, Rumi, National Geogaphic and Hemmingway, while having a couple Mojitos. As far as the visual world, Weegee. He was a crime scene photographer who would capture life around the crime. Odd Nerdrum. If you ever have the chance to see his work in person, do it. Sebastiao Salgado, with his beautiful photos of the devastation in Rwanda, you understand yin and yang. Also, Joel-Peter Witkin. I showed with him a couple years ago at Etherton Gallery in AZ. Had dinner with him after the opening and he was quite a great guy. After a couple drinks the conversation got a little strange, but still a great guy… PV: What do you feel is the relationship between "artists and their creation of art" and "art schools"? Do you think art school prepares ÿ one to create "art"?  WMB: Quite an interesting and controversial set of questions. I’m sure everyone that creates anything will have different reasons for their motivations. In general, mine has been discovery. I make everything for myself. In my studio in Tucson the walls are covered in the subjects I’m swimming in. I dream about how to plunge deeper into the core of my obsessions prompted by the visual creations in my home. My relationship between what I create and myself, I see as tools of focus for my obsessive quest for knowing.By the way, I’m really not into the word “Artist”. It always seemed elitist to me, or used as an excuse to sleep on peoples couches… Now as far as Art Schools… It always seemed silly to me. I think there’re great if you want to be an architect, graphic designer or create newest fantasy cars for Ford, but fine art… I don’t see how that would work. I guess you could learn techniques. I learned through trial and error and probably burned far more paper than an art student, but I came up with techniques that critics consider my own and far more personal than a schooled results. PV: What reactions do you hope for from those who view your cameras and the images you make with them? What do you hope viewers take away from seeing your work? WMB: Actually I was just having this conversation with a friend. I get rather annoyed with art that is created and calculated just to get an reaction from the viewer. It doesn’t expose anything real. I prefer to be given the room and space to think, and create my own stories. With these I build on my own thoughts, emotions and history creating a new environment of thought, growth and possibilities. With everyone’s history being so different, this space allows the pieces of a story to fit more smoothly and easily into who they are; creating what I believe is a greater understanding of the subject. After a show or publication I get a good amount emails. Most are from people relating how much the work touched their lives, and their personal stories and emotions are all quite different even though there are talking about the same piece. If the viewer can take away some sense of self-realisation, then that’s perfect. PV: Considering how diverse your life interests and activities are, how much longer do you see yourself making pinhole cameras and pinhole images? Where might you venture next? WMB: I want to make pinhole images on the Moon. ;) Wayne Martin Belger is represented by The Shooting Gallery in San Francisco and Etherton Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. His own website is at boyofblue.com, and has a page at MySpace. | |
| (Posted by Gregg Kemp) | |
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I first saw a photo of one of Wayne Belger's pinhole cameras and the images he was making with it last fall. It simply blew me away. Belger had made a 