Workshop + Talk: Dianne Bos

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The beauty of working with pinhole photography is that you can construct your own camera using everyday materials. This gives you the ability to change the size, shape and number of images captured by your pinhole construction using light-sensitive photo paper.

I’ve altered books into cameras that I have used to photograph images related to the books’ subject matter.  I’ve constructed multi-holed camera obscura devices that turn a candle flame into a galaxy of stars. A camera made from a lunch pail or coffee can could document travels afar or to the coffee shop. 

In my own practice, pinhole photography allows me to create my own unique camera/object and suggest a relationship between it and the image it makes.  The cameras allow me to understand and play with aspects of light beyond what my eyes see—to render visible that which cannot be seen.

In this workshop you will:

Be introduced to the world of pinhole photography.

• learn how to make your own pinhole camera from an object you’ve brought to the workshop or from one of the containers we will have available. 
• learn basic darkroom b/w developing techniques (we supply the materials)
• have your mind blown

What makes a good pinhole camera?  It’s most important that the container can be made lightproof easily or with the assistance of black tape.  This is an intro workshop so there’s not a lot of time for troubleshooting. Metal cans, boxes with lids, lunch pails or pumpkins can work. Clear or white containers don’t work. A light proof interior is critical. 

The magical appeal of alternative photo processes and pinhole photography continues to grow in this era of digital imaging. Many contemporary photo-based artists are using early image-making techniques, possibly as a reaction against ‘the digital’ but mainly  because this ‘simple’ technology can be used to create very original imagery. 

This lecture by artist Dianne Bos will explore the history, art, and science behind pinhole photography and its inspiration for her own work.  Bos has evolved various thematic bodies of work, and merged technical innovations to create new visual hybrids: her innovative uses of pinhole, film, camera obscura, photogram, installation, cyanotype and chlorophyll printing all formulate and extend her investigations of journeying, time, and the science of light. 

Dianne Bos' photo-based work has been exhibited internationally in numerous group and solo exhibitions since 1981. Her recent exhibition 'The Sleeping Green: No Man's Land 100 years later’ opened at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris in April 2017 and travelled across Canada. Many of Bos’s recent exhibitions feature work made with handmade cameras, walk-in light installations, and sound pieces. 

She has evolved various thematic bodies of work, and merged technical innovations to create new visual hybrids: her innovative uses of pinhole, film, camera obscura, photogram, installation, cyanotype and chlorophyll printing all formulate and extend her investigations of journeying, time, and the science of light. 

‘The excitement, for me, lies not in photographing and reproducing something I can see, but in revealing the imperceptible (and maybe only the imagined) using the physics of light and time and traditional darkroom techniques.’

Bos has taught at AUArts Calgary, Sheridan College, University of Calgary and has offered numerous alternative photography workshops in Spain, Iceland, Italy and France. She has received numerous awards and grants.