My pinhole photography was featured in Le Petit Journal, published on the website by Ecole des Artistes, a community for all lovers of the arts and the French language.
Encounters with pinhole photography / How I became an artist / Three works (descriptions) / Career / Me and France / Sources of inspiration / Techniques / Crazy dreams / The role of art, in the form of Q&A.
Thanks for reading.
November novembre, 2024
French and Frenchspeeking artists in Japan: Mieko Tadokoro, pinhole photographer/artist (Tokyo)
Q. YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH PINHOLE PHOTOGRAPHY
A. My first contact with pinhole photography was in 1989, the year of the 150th anniversary of the birth of photography. Passing by the Carnavalet Museum bookshop after visiting a photo exhibition, a book of photos of the Jardin du Luxembourg by Ilan Paterson caught my eye and I went home with it. His images were not only beautiful, but also concealed an element of mystery. At the end of the book, I found some very curious data on the exposure time of each image, which seemed too long for a normal shot. I finally realized that these images had been created by a pinhole camera. Six months later, as I passed the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône, I saw a poster announcing a summer pinhole workshop. I had finally found what I was looking for !
* small, very fine hole used as a camera lens.
Q. WHAT MADE YOU BECOME AN ARTIST
A. When I decided to live in Paris in the late 80s, I had a vague idea of becoming a photographer with a conventional camera. My chance encounter with the pinhole photography brought me into contact with photographers and artists in Paris. What's more, in the 1990s there were a number of interesting photography-related events in Paris, such as the Mois de la Photo, which really motivated me to become a photographer myself.
Q. 3 WORKS
* “Perforation La Tour Eiffel (1993): to take part in the Camera Obscura exhibition at the Hungarian Museum at the very start of my career, I tinkered a pinhole camera from a simple metal box into which I placed a roll of blank film cut to size. An example of System D !
* “Still life after Juan Sánchez Cotán” (2001): I wonder if this 16th-century painter also waited half an hour for his hanging cabbage to stop moving !
For my still life series, I drew inspiration from Flemish paintings, for which the camera obscura would also have been used.
* “L'art du Moyen Age de la librairie et Musée de Cluny” (1996): from the “Vitrines ou la flâneuse de Paris” series. This photo, taken on a Sunday morning, is an example of serendipity, where the spears in Paolo Uccello's painting and the pipes on the scaffolding at the Musée de Cluny echo each other !
Q. YOUR CAREER
A. I am self-taught in photography. With the pinhole photography, the "homemade" is possible and very common, from the manufacture of the camera to the printing of the photos, including the shooting and the development of the film. I learned photography as I needed it.
I would like to add that membership in an alternative photography club in France, l’Association pour la Photographie Ancienne et ses techniques, has also taught me that prints should be considered with equal or greater importance than shooting.
Q. YOU AND FRANCE
A. I started studying French first at the Athéné Français in Japan when I was twenty, but I progressed only slowly until I went to live in Paris in 1990, with my husband who was stationed there. My stay there lasted until 2008. What strongly influenced me was the talent of the French for DIY and the "System D". When I think about it, it was indispensable to my art, which was very manual and rudimentary.
Q. YOUR INSPIRATION SOURCES
A. Light and shadow, monochrome prints.
Q. YOUR TECHNIQUE
A. My pinhole camera, tinkered from a tea box, can only hold one sheet of film. To allow me to take several shots outside and to avoid the risk of mishaps, the day before I prepare about twenty cameras, each loaded with a film. The "viewfinder-free" camera taught me to imagine the composition in my head before taking the shot, and the lack of a tripod made me adopt a low-level angle that accentuates the depth of field.
So my technique has always been very simple:
– manual work: making the camera, shooting, developing the film and printing the photos
– material: film and photo paper
– monochrome which is more aesthetic and less expensive, in my opinion.
To sum up, the 3M ("manual", "material", "monochrome") are my trademark !
Q. A CRAZY DREAM
A. In an age of overtourism and the scarcity of silver halide materials, I would now like to go back to the source of photography and play with old photographic papers that were produced a hundred years ago.
Q. THE ROLE OF ART: For me, art helps to raise awareness of the cultural and social diversity of people living in the world and the basic needs common to all human beings.
Mieko Tadokoro’s official website: https://www.miekotado.com
Perforation la Tour Eiffel (1993) 50 x 60 cm
Nature Morte d’après Juan Sanchez Cotán (2005) 28 x 35 cm
Vitrine ou Flâneuse de Paris LArt du Moyen Âge (1996) 30 x 40 cm
For visuals please refer to the website of Ecole des Artistes.
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