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Joe VanCleave never met Giambattista della Porta, but he owes him a debt of gratitude. Della Porta was a Renaissance man in every sense: a pioneering cryptographer, astrologer, and mathematician, he studied alchemy, philosophy, and the occult. In 1558, the Italian polymath became the first to describe the workings of a camera obscura, becoming the godfather of modern photography.
Five centuries later, in an age when photography is measured in megapixels and the zoom power of lenses, VanCleave finds a satisfying authenticity in capturing an image with the most basic rudiments of the craft, using handmade equipment, much of which even della Porta might recognize.
It couldn’t be simpler. A box. A tiny hole. Film or photographic paper. Put the hole at one end of the box, the film at the other, and there you have it: a pinhole camera.
VanCleave, of Albuquerque, N.M., is one of the growing band of photographers who relish crafting their art with just a box and a hole, flying in the face of digital imagery. His pictures have the distinctive dreamlike quality that pinhole photography can produce, with an almost infinite depth of field and an otherworldly sense of seeing recognizable objects as if for the first time.
But it is in crafting the cameras themselves that VanCleave, 49, has carved a niche.“Pinhole photography has a simplicity that is satisfying in so many ways, and it’s immensely rewarding to
craft your own camera,” says VanCleave.
“It can take a few minutes to craft a camera, or upwards of a week. For me, the satisfaction is in knowing that the image was truly handcrafted, from the camera itself to the photo produced.”
VanCleave says he notices more and more people getting involved with pinhole photography. “It’s a reaction to the manufactured electronic photography equipment that thinks and does everything for you. People want to get back to the origins of the art and craft of photography.”
Many of VanCleave’s cameras are works of art in themselves, hewn from oak, walnut, or aluminum, and resting on tripods he crafted from black walnut and poplar. One camera in galvanized steel, with nine pinholes peppering the side like bullet holes, would not be out of place in a modern art museum.
For VanCleave, it has a more practical purpose: to put nine different exposures onto one large sheet of photographic paper, producing an atmospheric montage. “If I’m shooting an old farmhouse, the main shot might be a panorama of the farm and the fields,” he says. “Then the images on the side might be of the farmhouse and barns, with images above and below of the farm gates, cattle, and other details.”
But crafting pinhole cameras need not be complex. “I’ve used found materials,” says VanCleave. “I’ve made several cameras out of metal cookie tins. It can be any container you can make light-tight.”
Other enthusiasts have made pinhole cameras
Photography by Joe Van Cleave
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