Women and pinholes

It seems to me that a disproportionate number of the best pinhole

images come from women. One such example I came across recently is

Martha Casanave. In the past, she has worked with a 4x5 camera and

home-made pinholes to produce some dreamy, soft-edged images. Her

most recent work-in-progress, <a

href="http://www.marthacasanave.com/cp.html"><b>Coastal

Pinholes</b></a>, features carefully staged surreal images made with a

high-precision pinhole of some sort.

I doubt you'll get a thesis outta that observation, Mike, but they are amazing images. Thanks for the link.

??? Really wonderful images, regardless of artist's gender)

Here's another, <a href="http://www.dorothyrichardson.com/index.html"><b>Dorothy Richardson</b></a>. Her work with the pinhole was spotlighted in the last issue of <i>B&W Magazine</a>. She has some color work exhibited on her site along with the b&w and some photography with conventional cameras.

Turning off the italics, I hope...</i> I don't have a compilation of statistics on the proportions of men and women pinholers, but it seems to me that I see more women doing photos I like.

Here's another I like that's close to home, <a href="http://www.aeternus.com/foyer.html"><b>lisa a. johnston</b></a>.

Mike,

 

Here is a good exercise to test your theory without bias due to the small sample set of those "well-known" photographers: go through the hugh archive of pinhole photographs in

 

http://www.pinholeday.org/gallery/

 

and carefully choose what you think the best and then count how many of them were shot by women.

Mike, maybe you're just more in touch with your feminine side.

 

Alan

I think I'll put Sam's suggestion on hold until I can get into town to the one good Internet cafe with a high-speed connection. With a 24kbps connection at home, I tend not to look at any display that puts more than a couple pictures on the screen at a time. I did take a quick look and there are clearly some good images there. To be honest, though, I think that sort of compendium would be a lot more pleasant to view as a hanging exhibit. Of course, that is probably true of any photo collection, but single artist web sites offer the opportunity to explore issues of development, styles, techniques, and meanings in a way I find much more satisfying.

I think women have a better "touch", if you will. A bit more artisic by nature and perhaps more patient with the process. This from a ham fisted old ex heavy equipment operator.