Digital Pinhole Triennial, 2nd edition
September 20 to October 21, 2014
Memory of Light
Curated by André Paquin
ARTISTS : Doris Lamontagne | Eva Aurich | Frances Caswell Routhier | Geoffrey Gurd | Gilles Masse | Guy Glorieux | Guy Lafontaine | Izabel Barsive | Jadikan | Jocelyne Bélanger | Johanne Lafrenière | Joseph Muscat | Lluís Ivern | Lorraine St-Arnaud | Michel Claverie | Paul Walty | Renée Chevalier
Curated by André Paquin, Memory of Light shows the work of seventeen artists who took pictures using a modern pinhole camera. This pinhole camera is built from an interchangeable lens digital camera to which the lens is taken off and replaced with a piece of black cardboard or the body cap with a small hole in it. This hole lets light pass through without distortion, optical aberration, or focus.
The images resulting from this technique are blurred and imprecise, since the exposure time is relatively long. But because the light that touches the sensitive surface travels in straight lines, the image is pure and contains no deformation. Thus is created a durable and true representation of an ephemeral reality.
Centre d’artistes Voix Visuelle would like to thank the Ontario arts Council, Canadian Heritage, the City of Ottawa and les Caisses populaire Desjardins for their support.
Memory of Light
The idea behind the triennial project is taking an old process—the pinhole camera—and adapting it to modern technology, namely the interchangeable lens digital camera. (It’s as simple as taking off the lens and replacing it with a piece of black cardboard or the body cap with a small hole in it.)
With today’s technology, we can pierce holes that are so small and so perfectly round that astronomers have returned to the pinhole camera to take even more accurate pictures of the universe for their research. When all is said and done, the opening that is called the pinhole is just a hole! It lets light pass through without distortion, optical aberration, or focus.
Once you take a photo without a lens the photo takes over as we relinquish control and invite the unexpected in. The images thus formed by light travelling in straight lines and by the relentless passage of time are in essence bearers of nebulous truths.
Modern devices and their high-performance lenses, operating at thousandths of a second and suggesting thousands of focal points, may actually show too much, whereas we are swept up in the mystery that pinhole camera images create. In actual fact, the blurriness in such photos is caused by the imprecise nature of the process that continuously captures reflected light.
When a simple cardboard box traps light to create a faithful and lasting image of a fleeting reality, the artist discovers the spirit that inspired the pioneers.
Submissions included:
-Curriculum vitae (maximum 2 pages)
-An artist’s statement including a project proposal (75–150 words)
-A detailed list of the visual documentation (numbers, titles, and comments)
-Up to 10 digital images in JPEG format with a maximum display resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels
-The properties of each JPEG file must include the following information:
date the photo was taken, camera model, exposure time, iso speed, focal length
(f0 or f-)
-Participation fee of $30 payable through PayPal to [email protected]
PLEASE SEND YOUR SUBMISSION BY EMAIL TO: [email protected]