The first image made using light sensitive paper and taken by a pinhole camera was in 1850 and over the last 160 years, schools of artists and photographers have become pioneers in this medium, showing us that a camera isn’t always necessary to make a photographic image. From Man Ray to Cordier, cameraless images honour modernism and the Bauhaus. They embody surrealism and the Avant Garde. More recently, through artists such as Fabian Miller, they are traditional, philosophical, and embody the rurality of the countryside.
In the 21st century, the age of the ‘snapshot’, it is interesting to find artists who continue to strip the elements of photography down to its purest forms, casting shadows on to light sensitive paper.
A pinhole camera also known as a camera obscura, is a simple optical imaging device usually made with a box. In one side of the box is a small hole where light passes through to create an image inside the box. The box inside needs to be completely black as well as the outside of the box which needs to be completely light proof. Up to a certain point the smaller the hole the sharper the image, a 2mm hole is what is most commonly used.
Principle of a pinhole camera light rays from an object pass through a small hole to form an inverted image. Because light travels in straight lines this is why the image shows upside down and not the right way up.
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