A (wooden) box with no lens, just a hole as big (or small) as a pin. That’s all there is to it. The images have an overall sharpness, but never a focus on one particular point. Because the hole is tiny the exposure times are long and can vary between 1 second and 20 minutes and sometimes even longer when the light is subdued. Hence, the same piece of (mostly old) celluloid will be exposed to a particular event for a relatively long time; it’s not a fraction of a moment but rather a certain amount of time which is caught on film.
My pinhole camera has accompanied me on many of my travels. It stands for the timelessness of the world we live in. The details in these photographs are less important than catching the sense of a certain place and showing that life goes on. Pinhole portraits also have a timeless quality to them. Due to the long exposure times, there is no time for keeping up appearances – only the self is left.