“LIFE: Life with Photography IV” Exhibition

Perforation La Tour Eiffel

Two of my works are on display in the group exhibition “LIFE: Life with Photography IV” at Gallery Bauhaus through May 31.

gallery bauhaus http://gallery-bauhaus.com/top.html

“Eiffel Tower Perforation” is a work that I made in 1993, when I had just started pinhole photography, to participate in the CAMERA OBSCURA exhibition at the Hungarian Museum of Photography in Kecskemet, Hungary.

A pinhole was drilled in the bottom of a 6-liter tin can, and 35mm film was cut into six pieces and lined up without gaps on a piece of cardboard set inside the lid, as if it were a single sheet of film. Since this was a pinhole camera without a viewfinder, I took the shot looking up at the Eiffel Tower from below, carefully checking by eye to make sure that the top of the Eiffel Tower would not be cut off.

After shooting, I put this film that had been cut into pieces into the same developing tank and developed it myself. I was lucky to get the composition I was aiming for on the first shot.

Since this negative was out of standard size, I had it enlarged to over 4 times its original size at PICTO BASTILLE in Paris. More than 30 years have passed since then, but the print has not deteriorated, and I am again impressed by the work of this laboratory founded by Pierre Gassmann, who was widely known as a legendary printer.

The other, which I have posted before on my blog, is a black-and-white pinhole still-life photograph modeled after “Still Life with Marmelo, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber” (c. 1602, oil on canvas, collection of the San Diego Museum of Art) by Juan Sanchez Cotán, a painter considered the greatest Spanish Baroque painter of the 16th century.

On Saturday, April 26, I participated in a talk event by the exhibiting artists at Gallery Bauhaus, where I explained to visitors about my pinhole works on display and the works in my portfolio and received favorable reviews.