As with every year, I acknowledged the 2020 Winter Solstice by executing a batch of pinhole photographs.
Light is the fundamental property of photography, so to me it feels right to make photographs in this most raw way—no lens, no film, no electronics—on the day when we have the least of it. Additionally, these photos are direct, unreplicatable exposures on rare, vintage photo paper—materials that have been waiting for ages in the dark.
With the low, fleeting light of the north, wind and bitter cold, handmade box-cameras, and photo paper of questionable reliability, this year I’ve been thinking more about how built into this ongoing project are many reasons why it shouldn’t work. Indeed, this year I don’t even have an on-site darkroom to see my results in near real time and adjust my process accordingly, as I did last year at the Kulttuurikeskus Vanha Paukku / Ostribothnian Photography Centre artist residency in Finland. This year it was only something like educated guesswork and dead reckoning.
It’s a difficult mission and photographically this probably shouldn’t work. But that’s exactly the point.
Music © The F*cked Up Beat — “I Should Never Have Left El Paso / Piano in the House” CC BY-SA 4.0