Marian Roth
The Mysteries of Light #1, 2000, c-print, exposed in pinhole van, 24" x 43", Lent by the Artist
I have been making photographs for almost thirty years, but not until I found the pinhole camera did I really begin to experience and understand what I would call art—or maybe it is an unfolding of myself, a revealing. How does it happen that an inexact puncture in a piece of metal, set in a makeshift container, can help me express just exactly what I had only vaguely sensed existing behind the visible and apparent world?
Right now my camera is a van. I drive it around looking for places that compel me. Then I go inside the camera, hold up a piece of paper, and try to get a feeling for what it is seeing. If it seems like something could happen, I unroll a long sheet of color mural photo paper and fight with it until it is hanging up somewhere near where the image should be. And then I make an exposure. Sometimes it takes my breath away—the beauty of that moment.
—Marian Roth
The basic concept of pinhole photography—of making a small hole in an otherwise darkened space which allows light to enter and project an inverted image on a surface—was discovered as early as the fifth century BCE. Artists have been experimenting with the principle ever since. Marian Roth has been using the pinhole technique for more than ten years, and has created a variety of pinhole cameras, out of such items as a cookie tin and more recently, her van, which becomes, in effect, a huge transportable camera.
Using this relatively simple method of photography, Roth achieves surreal images of great magic and mystery. Because the amount of light that enters through the hole is limited, and there is no lens to focus, the resulting images are soft in their overall detail. Roth works with large sheets of paper, and for some images produces both negatives and positives that are distinguished by their different colors. These photographs can make one dizzy, for the space in them is precipitously warped and the intense red, yellow, green and blue colors are hallucinatory. In these haunting images Roth takes the familiar landscape of Cape Cod and transforms it into a dreamscape of twisted space and glowing light and color.
—Rachel Rosenfield Lafo
Director of Curatorial Affairs
Please join the artist for an informal gallery talk on Saturday, July 14 at 3pm.
