Dylan Esposito is the sixth GSA student who took part in our collaborative project with the School of Art. He worked with ReConnect artists Richard Anderson and Simon McAuley, experimenting with pinhole cameras.
“I have been collaborating with Simon McAuley and Richard Anderson, who both attend the ReConnect programme. We have been exploring pinhole photography, which has been a really exciting journey for us all. It is perhaps the simplest form of photography and also perhaps the most exciting.
It simply consists of a pinhole (the lens), a dark chamber (the camera) and a piece of light sensitive paper or film – the negative. We started the exploration through transforming cheap souvenir boxes into cameras, taking photographs within our studio spaces. We then processed these in the darkroom to create our positive prints.
Given the nature of the “box cameras” only having the capability of taking one sheet of paper, it did not allow us the freedom to shoot more than one photograph without needing to return to a dark space to change our papers / negatives. We decided to make 35mm film pinhole cameras out of black foam board, allowing us to use both B&W and colour film, which we developed and scanned down in Street Level Photoworks, which is conveniently situated on the ground floor of the building!
Perhaps the most exciting part of the process is really not knowing what we are photographing at all or whether any of the negatives will be correctly exposed. We have, however, made some really strong photographs, experimenting with different printing methods.
As well as being multi-disciplinary artists, Simon has a background within Fine Art Photography and Richard within Physics, making this collaboration the perfect accumulation of different specialist understandings. We have been able to combine Richard’s understanding of how light behaves within photography, with Simon’s understanding of the medium of photography to make some really exciting, successful work. We are currently working on developing our colour photographs, editing them digitally in the hope to make some larger scale prints to be exhibited. Richard is currently working on constructing some new lenses for his pinhole camera and Simon is building a new camera which will be able to take large format 5×4” sheet paper negatives. I am really excited by what we will all be able to achieve with this project!”
Many thanks to all the students and staff who took part in the GSA project! The finished work will hopefully be exhibited in a yet to be confirmed venue in the next few months.
