This March, Nicole and I did an artist in residency program in a nearby Portland middleschool. The goal of the 2 day workshops was to assimilate the students to the basic mechanics of the camera and film and have them create their own camera obscura (also called a pinhole camera) out of a juice box.
It was startling to us that NONE of the 350 students who attended knew how the original camera worked. When asked how a camera works, they all responded with answers about circuitry and electric screens and motorized buttons. Amazing how modern technology has taken less than a decade to overshadow a century's worth of history from the standard film camera. With the great push into the digital age, I wonder if shooting with film will ever live again.
Certainly, we experienced a renaissance of this art form through our experimentation with the camera obscura. Before this project, I had only used a pinhole camera a spattering of times. Now I find myself continually shooting with it and lavishing up its ability to create haunting, gritty, atmospheric images.
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