Be among the first to see the stunning images in Poetics of Light: Pinhole Photography and enjoy a lecture and book signing by guest curators Nancy Spencer and Eric Renner, "Passion, Light and Pinhole Photography," at 1 pm in the History Museum auditorium. Reception and book signing, 2 to 4 pm. Free with admission; Sundays free to NM residents.
As an extra treat, the Palace Press will release its latest letterpress broadside, Jane Always Dreaded Flying Home, featuring a digitally printed pinhole photo by Gregg Kemp and the poem it inspired by Santa Fe Poet Laureate Jon Davis. April 27 is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, and you can watch as images are added to www.pinholeday.org.
Poetics of Light offers a premiere of original prints by photographers from around the world. Drawn from the holdings of the Pinhole Resource Collection, the body of work was amassed by co-curators Eric Renner and Nancy Spencer in San Lorenzo, in New Mexico’s Mimbres Valley. Seeking a permanent repository and impressed by the capabilities of the Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors, the couple donated the collection—more than 6,000 photographs, 60 cameras and hundreds of books—to the New Mexico History Museum in 2012.
The exhibit’s opening coincides with Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, a global event in which pinhole aficionados post their of-the-moment images to a website, thus celebrating in a high-tech way their mastery of low-tech photography.
In an age when every cell phone can take a respectable picture, cameras as low-tech as an oatmeal box still beguile a legion of practitioners, both artistic and documentarian. With roots in the ancient discovery of the camera obscura, pinhole photography has enchanted artists from the 1880s through today. Through January 10, 2016, Poetics of Light: Pinhole Photography, in the Herzstein Gallery of the New Mexico History Museum, explores a historical art form that exemplifies thoroughly contemporary ideals: Do-it-yourself handmade technology with a dash of steampunk style.
Nearly 225 photographs and 40 cameras show how a light-tight box pierced by a hole and holding a piece of old-school film can reveal alternate versions of reality. At heart, photography is a method of capturing the way that light plays upon objects, the seen and the unseen—a visual form of poetry that extends beyond a literal representation whenever pinhole cameras are involved.
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