Retro Tech

Mickey Bayard's Fotolog

Here is something very simple, beautiful and fascinating. Not only is this guy's work retro, but I actually found him OFFLINE! That's right, I went out into the real, physical universe! It was a beautiful day, and I was wandering around the outdoor market at Union Square, and found him selling his prints.

Mickey Bayard's technique is "pinhole photography", perhaps the oldest technique in imaging. It simply involves light from an illuminated scene passing through a very small hole and producing an inverted image on the opposite side. There is a ninth century reference to the technique in the writing of the Chinese author Tuan Cheng Shih. It was described more fully around AD 1000 by the Persian mathematician Alhazen Ibn Al-Haytham. It does not appear in the European literature until 600 years later, as Giambattista della Porta's Camera Obscura (guess who usually gets the credit?). Eventually, photographic emulsions were used to record the images projected through the pinhole.

Mr. Bayard uses a variety of homemade cameras which are basically light-tight boxes with a pinhole in one wall and a piece of light sensitive paper on the opposite wall. After setting up the shot, he opens the pinhole (which acts as the lens) for 5 seconds to 5 minutes.

I should point out that this guy's work is not notable just because of the clever use of film cannisters or Altiod boxes as cameras. He is also a VERY talented photographer. The pieces are, in his words, "...reminiscent of the old masters of photography". I agree.