CAMERA: PINHOLE
Pinhole photography is photography in its most
basic form, involving no optical or electronic ele-
ments, working with only a light proof container
and a tiny hole. The container can be made from
cardboard, wood, metal, plastics, almost anything
the photographer’s imagination can suggest. In the
1980s, Jeff Guess (American) used his mouth as a
pinhole camera. Inside a pinhole camera, either a
piece of photo paper or photo film can be placed to
record the image. The film or paper can be black
and white, color, Polaroid, or hand-sensitized
materials. The pinhole opening can be made
directly into the container or from other materials
such as aluminum shim attached to the container.
The shutter can be closed and opened by a simple
piece of black tape or more sophisticated mechan-
ical devices. The pinhole camera can be any size,
from tiny 35-mm film containers, to a shoe box,
lunch box, or trashcan size, to an entire room or
building. In the 1990s, Patricia Gabas (French) and
Andre Kertzenblatz (French) built a pinhole cabin
large enough for several people to fit inside and put
it on the back of a truck, a mobile pinhole camera,
literally acamera obscura, or dark room.
Without the pinhole opening, ambient light
striking a piece of photo paper or film cannot
represent a scene because light rays, traveling in
straight lines, are sending information from any
particular point to all directions at once. This
excessive information cannot reproduce on photo
paper a recognizable image. A piece of photo paper
that has been held up to a chair and developed
looks exactly like a piece of photo paper held up
to a lamp and developed—only the scattered light
will be captured and the picture will feature only
gray tones. This chaotic quality of light can be
structured by forcing the light to travel through a
tiny hole. A tiny hole blocks most light rays, trans-
mitting light from a particular point in one, as
opposed to, multiple directions. The projected
image is upside down but otherwise recognizable.
When properly directed light strikes a photo-
graphic piece of paper or film, the projected
image can be recorded as a photograph.
The phenomena of pinhole, or camera obscura,
was understood and exploited well before the
advent of photography. In China, Mo Ti (c. 4000
B.C.) describes how light traveling in a straight line,
like an arrow, projects a recognizable image. Egyp-
tian scholar Hassan ibn Hassan (c. 1000) describes
the use of a pinhole device to observe an eclipse of
the sun. Other historical references to pinhole
include Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), Francis Bacon
(c. 1267), and Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519).
Some of the historical activity with pinhole
images has been scientific, such as observing
eclipses, measuring time, or researching the quali-
ties of light. Some of the activity has been educa-
tional, such as workshops or classes where people
make and use their own pinhole camera, exploring
firsthand the phenomena of orderly light and
photography. Some of the historical activity has
been in the art world. In the fifteenth century,
painters used camera obscura devices to help
sketch and paint with perspective. The camera
obscura device was a light tight space or container
with a small opening pointed at the scene to be
sketched or painted. Light traveling through the
hole projected the scene onto paper or other sup-
port to be traced by the artist. With the advent of
photography in the nineteenth century, Sir David
Brewster (1856) coined the word pinhole and is the
first to have made pinhole photographs. Use of
pinhole cameras fell out of use in the early part of
the twentieth century. In the 1960s and 1970s, there
was a revival of many alternative photographic
processes and through the end of the twentieth
century, pinhole photography surfaced in the
arena of contemporary art.
There are several particular qualities to pinhole
photographs, such as long exposures, infinite depth
of field, more or less refined resolution, angles of
view, possible distortions, and multiple exposures.
Without the use of optical glass elements, the pro-
jected image is relatively dim and thus exposure
times are often necessarily lengthy and can last
from a few seconds to several days. Exposure times
will vary according to the amount of available light,
the size of the pinhole, and the sensitivity of the film
or paper being exposed; the more available light and
the larger the size of the pinhole, the shorter the
exposure time. A smaller opening makes for rela-
tively longer exposure times, but has better resolu-
tion than large openings, producing a more refinedCAMERA: PINHOLE