In My Little Eye
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The pictures in this series were taken with the camera shown to the right, a common old folding, size 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 inch, but with the lens removed and replaced by a tiny pinhole in the front lid. The shutter is a metal sheet which is pulled up and frees the pinhole when a picture is to be exposed, about three seconds in sunny weather.
The pinhole camera produces images that are geometrically correct, with the one limitation that the image is flat, and objects at all distances come out equally sharp. When Swedish author August Strindberg (1849 - 1912) made his photographic experiments, he was very suspicous of any lenses. He thought that with that kind of camera you got a picture not of the subject but of the glass lenses. Be therewith as it may, these pictures show mainly the cityscape on Riddarholmen island in Stockholm, which Strindberg knew very well as he grew up there. Not much has changed since his days, give or take a few traffic signs. |
