Art Feature
Jesseca Ferguson, Zodiac Man, 1998, 5" x 4", pinhole photograph (gold-toned printing-out paper)
Introduction by Jesseca Ferguson
While some might consider me a photographer, I feel I am really more of an assembler of images and tableaux, which then come to exist as pinhole photographs of an interior landscape. The poetic aspects of pinhole photography are what draw me to it. Although the pinhole camera is “blind”-it has no viewfinder or lens-I find that it “sees” in mysterious ways. The pinhole camera’s “sight” grants infinite depth of field to the object and images before it, thus allowing us to see the camera’s pinhole vision, which is characterized by the odd clarity of dreams or memory. Working without a viewfinder, I can’t know exactly what my pinhole camera will give me; thus my camera becomes my silent and enigmatic collaborator.
Usually I work in my own studio, setting up arrangements of images and objects culled from my “museum of memory,” my personal collection of oddments, books, and artifacts. Using only natural light, my exposures often take several hours. I then contact-print my images using nineteenth-century techniques (or modern versions of antique processes) requiring ultraviolet light. My work is slow, hand-built, and cumulative, rather like the layering of dust or memories over time.