Underwater Pinhole Photography Project

Ongoing since 1997
underwater pinhole cameras and accessories, underwater pinhole photographs, ephemera

The Underwater Pinhole Photography Project brings together Donald Lawrence’s combined interest in the landscape of the ocean’s inter-tidal and sub-tidal zones and historical optical and photographic forms, in this case pinhole photography. Indicative of the way that each of Lawrence’s major bodies of work contain the elements of making and the resulting imagery, this project includes black and white, and polaroid photographs, the hand-built cameras used to take the photographs, a video, a journal, a kayak repurposed into a floating darkroom and DIY (do-it-yourself) equipment. A key aspect of Lawrence’s practice is his enduring interest in museum display, presenting objects such as equipment (innovatively adapted by Lawrence) and photographs as equally integral to the work, to be viewed together in the gallery context.

Similarly to other works in this exhibition, Romantic Commodities (1991-1993) and The Sled (1995), Lawrence merges his interest in “wilderness” camping with a critical interrogation of our relationship to nature. Focussing on his particular interest in sea-kayaking, Lawrence set out to capture intertidal sea-life from his kayak by doing away with current, technologically advanced, waterproof cameras, instead using a pinhole camera to capture his subjects with the soft focus effect of 19th Century Pictorialists and Naturalists who used early photographic and pre-photographic forms and technologies. The juxtaposition between the historical, photographic reference and the overburdened technology of the kayak underscores the mediated relationship that exists between urban and “wilderness” environments.

Unlike photographic technology that uses a complex configuration of lenses, shutters and, more recently, microchips, the pinhole camera can be as simple as a cardboard box that admits light through a small opening to capture an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. This invention is based on a principle observed by Aristotle in 350 BCE and developed during the Renaissance period into the camera obscura, another photographic form that comprises much of Lawrence’s work.

In her 2002 essay “Accumulations of Desire: The Pinhole Adventures of Donald Lawrence” included in the accompanying publication for the exhibition The Underwater Pinhole Photography Project, Katy McCormick speaks to the experimental and conceptual nature of Lawrence’s choice in medium. The title of this exhibition is gratefully borrowed from McCormick’s turn of phrase.

Pinhole photography, with its unpredictability and its experimental nature, provides many artists the perfect vehicle for investigating contemporary issues while underlining the role of photographer as explorer. Unlike single-lens reflex or large-format cameras, which allow the photographer to see what is in the viewfinder or on the ground glass, the pinhole camera forces the photographer to conceptualize or project a remote view, casting the eye adrift like some unmanned ship, into territories which cannot be physically entered.

Funding for this project has been provided through a Creation and Production grant from the Canada Council for the Arts and from Thompson Rivers University’s Scholarly Activity Fund.