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LARAC Artist of the Month features a selection of Portraits in Pinhole
by Renee Creager O'Brien. The lensless camera images represent more
than a decade of making photographs of people passing through her
personal and professional life. Rather than a realistic codification
of the individual, these photographic renderings play on the
transformative nature of portraiture, visually and figuratively,
blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
Renee Creager O'Brien is an artist-educator who pursued formal
studies in painting and art education at Hofstra University,
Hempstead, NY. After completing a bachelor's degree, she studied
drawing and illustration at the Art Students League in New York City
with Frank J. Reilly and painting with Knox Martin at New York
University. Later, Dr. O'Brien's creative work took a turn to
photography and video. She worked as a freelance photographer and
completed her master's degree in Communication Arts at New York
Institute of Technology. She also taught art history, photography,
video, and TV production in high schools and colleges on Long Island. In the 1990s, her art took on another direction--a visual journey
through historic photography techniques, alternative photographic
processes and pinhole photography. Dr. O'Brien completed her Ph.D. at
New York University with a dissertation on photography and aesthetics,
The Post-Romantic Vision of Contemporary Pinhole Photographers. In
2001, Dr. O'Brien was guest curator for a follow-up exhibition of
international pinhole photography, Shards of Light, at the Visual Arts
Gallery at Adirondack Community College.
Renee Creager O'Brien lives in Hadley, New York with her husband,
Tom O'Brien, a renowned sculptor and portrait painter. She exhibits
her photographs regionally and nationally, continuing to receive
numerous awards. Dr. O'Brien regularly lectures on the history of
aesthetics in photography and authored articles on postmodernism and
pinhole photography for Pinhole Journal, NYSATA News, Photographic
Archives Gallery and more. In 2004 her pinhole photographs,
Metropolitan Museum of Art Series, were included in the Empire State
College publication, All About Mentoring.
Dr. O'Brien is a mentor/tutor and course developer for Empire State
College, Center for Distance Learning and teaches courses in
photography, visual communications, and art history and aesthetics. She also teaches photography at Adirondack Community College. Between
teaching and living life, Renee continues to draw and paint and make
photographs.
Negatives and prints for this exhibition were made with one of
three different cameras converted to pinhole. The lenses of a 1924
Brownie Kodak (No. 2, Model 4) and a Wista 4x5 Field Camera were
removed and replaced by brass shims pierced in the center with a
fine cutting tool to make a pinhole aperture (or stenope). The lens
of a distressed 35mm Praktica was replaced with a piece of aluminum
foil perforated with a small needlehole. Photographs originated on
black and white negative film processed in a chemical darkroom,
transparencies (slide film), or Polaroid positives. Negatives and
working prints were scanned and digitally enlarged. Final exhibition
prints were generated on an Epson 2000P. |
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About Pinhole Photography |
Pinhole photography
or
stenopaic photography begins with pinhole
optics and the development of the camera obscura (dark chamber). When light enters a small hole in a wall of a darkened room, an
inverted image is formed on the opposite wall. During the
Renaissance, Leonardo investigated the camera obscura for visual and
scientific inquiry. In the 16th century, Della Porta's popular
publication, Natural Magic, described the pinhole camera obscura as
a picture-making device. Soon afterwards a lens replaced the pinhole
which admitted a brighter light and made a more precise replica. By
the 18th century, earlier walk-in dark rooms were replaced by
portable lens camera obscuras that were popular aids for drawing.
It was not until the 19th century and the invention of
photography that we see a revival of the pinhole camera. With the
ability to fix the image in the camera obscura, photography
challenged the world of painting and problematized the position of
photography as art. On the starting line were the "fuzzies" and the
sharp-focused photographers racing toward the definitive
photographic doctrine. The discourse central to image making, whether
objective record or subjective vision, resulted in parallel
developments. Some photographers embraced sharper lenses and faster
emulsions while others endorsed soft focused lenses, manipulating
negatives or prints, and replacing the lens with a pinhole. (The
pinhole image is actually made up of bundles of light rays reflected
from the object. Smaller pinholes admit narrower bundles of light
and produce a seemingly sharper image. However, the lensless image
never attains the absolute definition of a stopped down, lens
photo.)
The diffused, hazy qualities of pinhole were embraced by the 19th
century Pictorialists. George Davison, leader of the group in
Europe, won a Medal of Honor at the annual exhibition of the
Photographic Society of London for his 1890 pinhole photograph, The
Onion Field. Pinhole was in and out of favor during the early
20th century. In the 1960s, a time of rebellion against the
conventions in art, photography and society, pinhole returned with
vigor. Now in the 21st century with technology abounding,
pinhole photography has an international following. (In June
2007, a team of photographers in southern California transformed an
abandoned airplane hangar into a giant pinhole camera. Known
as The Legacy Project, this event is part of an ongoing photographic
tribute to the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, which is slated to
be turned into an urban park. The giant pinhole camera was
"loaded" with a huge piece of light-sensitive cloth to create what
may be the world's largest photograph.) www.legacyphotoproject.com |
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Renee Creager O'Brien
Hadley, NY
Renee O'Brien images
robrien630@aol.com |
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Read
about past Artists of the Month |
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Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Council
7 Lapham Place
Glens Falls, NY 12801
(518) 798-1144 • Fax: (518) 798-9122
information@larac.org
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