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Pinhole Photography
Davison's picture is reproduced in Renner (1995:42), and in some histories
of photography, e.g. Michael Langford's The Story of Photography (Oxford:
Focal Press 1992. p. 106), The Magic Image. The Genius of Photography,
edited by Cecil Beaton and Gail Buckland (London: Pavilion Books Ltd.
1989. p. 79), and Naomi Rosenblum's A World History of Photography
(New York: Abbeville Press, p. 310).
In 1892 the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg started experimenting
with pinhole photography. About one hundred of Strindberg's photographs
are preserved, of these three or four are pinhole images.
Pinhole photography became popular in the 1890s. Commercial pinhole
cameras were sold in Europe, the United States and in Japan. 4000 pinhole
cameras ("Photomnibuses") were sold in London alone in 1892. The
cameras seem to have had the same status as disposable cameras today –
none of the "Photomnibuses" have been preserved for posterity in camera
collections. Some years earlier, an American company had actually invented
a disposable pinhole camera, the "Ready Photographer", consisting of a dry
glass plate, a pinhole in tinfoil and a folding bellows. Another American
company sold "the Glen Pinhole Camera", which included six dry plates,
chemicals, trays, a print frame and ruby paper for a safelight. The very first
commercial pinhole camera was designed by Dehors and Deslandres in
France in 1887. Their camera had a rotating disc with six pinholes, three
pairs of similar sizes. Pictures of these cameras are found in Renner
(1995:43).
Mass production of cameras and "new realism" in the 20th century soon left
little space for pinhole photography. By the 1930s the technique was hardly
remembered, or only used in teaching. Frederick Brehm, at what was later to
become the Rochester Institute of Technology, was possibly the first college
professor to stress the educational value of the pinhole technique. He also
designed the Kodak Pinhole Camera around 1940.
❍ Nick Dvoracek's collection of historical articles
The Revival of Pinhole Photography
In the mid-1960s several artists, unaware of each other, began
experimenting with the pinhole technique – Paolo Gioli in Italy, Gottfried
Jäger in Germany, David Lebe, Franco Salmoiraghi, Wiley Sanderson and
Eric Renner in the USA. Coincidentally, many of these artists were working
with multiple pinholes. Wiley Sanderson was a professor of photography at
http://www.photo.net/photo/pinhole/pinhole (6 of 28)7/3/2005 2:15:39 AM