Winter Light, Tokyo

The pinhole camera portraits are taken during a very intensive and crazy working period at the Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo, in December 2017 and January 2018. Making a wooden camera helped me to avoid my usual shyness, and it also helped my models to stay spontaneous. One can't be afraid of a silly wooden box, right? Especially when the exposure time is 9 minutes? In my opinion there are endless possibilities, when you mix low-tech and hi-tech in contemporary art. I have used digital image post-production with cheap paper negatives produced by a wooden camera which I built. The lens is made from a bottom of a Suntory beer can. In these "low-fi" images the masking tapes, dust and scratches of original negatives are visible. Since I taught pinhole camera to college kids back in the late 1980’s, I have now made a full circle. I have returned back into pure wonder, magic and play - when our vulnerable presence is captured into light-sensitive two-dimensional surface.