Pinhole Camera Nudes

        I use the distortions of the oatmeal box pinhole camera and the digital colorizations to create a series of visceral images that probe the unconscious, stepping away from the literal reality and choosing instead to speak with an expressionism.  Through successive pulling of curves, B&W values are replaced with color in separate channels that ultimately create the dreamlike state of the finished piece. Objects or places juxtaposed with the model trigger a response that I react to while colorizing and the resulting images range from the absurd to the profound and from gender issues to politics.

       In 1998 I began to work with pinhole photography. Using an oatmeal box pinhole camera, I shoot 8x10 inch B&W film. With its extreme wide angle and distortion, the camera gives results that are constantly a surprise. I develop the B&W negatives, scan them into Photoshop, and then colorize each image.

This work is rooted in 16th Century with the pinhole optics and combined with the 21st Century digital print manipulations. With its solarization-like tone reversals and silkscreen-like color layering, these images are a hybrid of Photography and Digital Printmaking.