Each of these photographs is the
product of a 30 minute to 8 hour exposure onto a single sheet of large
format film in a handmade pinhole camera. I use a variety of models,
from a box camera to one I made out of a pocketbook to one I converted
from an eyeglass case. In all situations, my camera is not recognizable
as such. It doubles as both fashion accessory and my disguised tool
of surveillance.
I bring these cameras into private and semi-private domains:
hotel rooms, bathrooms, nightclubs, restaurants, bedrooms, and so on.
I use them as I once used a diary – to describe my experiences,
nights out, vacation moments, overnights – but in real time. I
am interested in the conflation of titillation and banality, intimacy
and absence that result in these time exposures.
In the end, these diary entries give little to no factual
evidence of events or emotions that transpired. The more movement that
occurs, the less the moving things or people register on film. The people
in these pictures have little or no identifiable traits, only hints.
As often in memory, the details of my life that are being recorded leave
little to no trace of their existence. Fact and fantasy become intertwined,
as do the surveyor and the surveyed.
All images have been made with large format film. The black
and white images are printed as gelatin silver prints; the color images
are printed digitally.
