Pinhole camera
In my last blog I told that I take pictures with a pinhole camera. I
think that most readers of my blogs don’t know what such a camera is. It is the
simplest camera you can imagine. It’s not more than a box with a very small
hole in it (the pinhole), which can be opened or closed with a shutter, and
with a film or sensor in it (but most pinhole cameras still use film). There
are more complicated types, but most pinhole cameras are like this. You can buy
it or you make it yourself. In mine you cannot change the diaphragm (size of
the pinhole). I open and close the shutter by hand and I use my watch for
measuring the time that the shutter must be open for making a photo (which is a
matter of several seconds).
Photos taken with a pinhole camera are a bit blurred and also moving people
and objects are always vague. So photos taken with a pinhole camera do not meet
the standards of a good photo. Why then make such photos in this age of digital
cameras that allow you to make technically perfect photos? Well, my reply is
another question: Why still make paintings in this age of photography?
I think that my answer has everything to do with what people consider
beautiful. Beauty is not an objective experience. It is subjective; and there
is no accounting for tastes, as is often said. Yet, there is something
objective about beauty. When I have an exhibition of my photos or when I present
them on an art market, it’s just these photos taken with my pinhole camera that
attract attention. Why? I think because they have a shade of beauty that cannot
be imitated by an ordinary digital or analogue camera. Beauty in photos (and
beauty in general, but that’s not what I want to talk about here) has nothing
to do with technical progress as people often seem to think. Nowadays, with
these technically perfect cameras, everybody can make good photos, they say. Is
that true? I doubt it. Even making a technically perfect photo with a simple
digital pocket camera of good quality still seems to be a problem for many
people. And is it the technical quality that makes a good photo a good photo?
Then all photos taken by Cartier Bresson could be considered rubbish now, for
instance. But they are still considered as top photography. Why? Because what
is photographically good is in the eyes and the minds of the makers and the
beholders and not in the technical quality (whatever this may mean, for isn’t
it so that also the idea that a photo must
not be blurred is nothing but a subjective opinion?). Technical progress is not
the same as progress as such, let alone that it is implicitly good and
beautiful. To take a photographic example, there are many photographers who
make photos with digital cameras of top quality and next they use photographic
filters (in Photoshop, for instance) to make them look like analogue photos
made on film! Why not simply use an analogue camera then? No surprise that today
we see a revival of analogue photography. For in the end the art of making a
good photo has nothing to do with using the most up to date techniques but
everything with choosing the right means for expressing what you want to
express. Sometimes simple or old-fashioned means are the best for it. It’s an
open door* and everybody knows, it’s true, but many people tend to forget it.
P.S. I have planned to buy a good digital camera, too. They have so many
advantages (as they have disadvantages as well).
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