Prick of a Pin
As in dreams, in a world illuminated only through the prick of a pin questions abound. During the fall of 2023, I made a stack of pinhole cameras from duct tape and cardboard boxes and began to use them to explore the subject of dreams, never sure what would happen when a ray of light seared a fragment of memory. I didn’t know how thrilling those surprises could be when I started.
Artifacts from my life and environs take on new meaning for me in these pictures. Through the tiniest of portals, a slower world reveals itself, smudged and speckled, with a person in its midst. She lingers—on a beach, bundled in a chair, by the side of a beast—holding onto time. Can she really do that? In dreams, yes, long enough to make connections that are impossible to forge during the frenzy of a day.
I find solace in the lilt of that slowed time, past and present rocking together, even as some of the pictures that emerge surprise me by their darkness. Perhaps they shouldn’t: Dreams shed light on truths we can’t always see, and may not want to.
So does play. In these photographs I don wigs, belted coats, and strange hats. Costumed, I become a woodsman, a gamekeeper, a countrywoman anchored by a circle of chairs. But they’re empty. Why?
While the answer may still elude me, I have found deep satisfaction in the mechanics of making images with these simplest of tools. Long minutes for each exposure tick by: The wind blows and shakes my box; a cloud swallows the sun; my feet grow cold. I day dream. Through a pinhole, I have traveled to a place of new possibilities.