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Turning the shack into a camera was a great adventure, like taming a wild animal. There was no running water and no electricity, and I was two miles away from supplies of any kind. I suffered plagues of heat, bites, wind, rain and caterpillar moth rash ( a virulent form of poison ivy). Over the three weeks, when it wasn't too hot and the sun was right, I made a camera in the “living room” of the shack. There were three views I could get--out the front window, out the back door, and through the kitchen. I made a large hole in the plastic I hung over the doors and windows, and then experimented with different size cardboard holes to use as an aperture for the actual exposure.

Being a wooden shack, the light leaked everywhere, so long exposures were deadly. Stumbling around in the dark with a giant piece of foamcore which reflected the outside image, I looked for pictures. I decided to use large sheets of hand-coated paper to make paper negatives, as well as 20x24 color paper, which I intended to collage. I dragged out mural paper, but I really wanted to tape sheets of hand-caoted paper onto a wall to make a large image. To do this I had to build “walls” out of taped-together pieces of foam core because the actual walls had built-in things like a wood burning stove or bookcases.