Pinhole photograph taken near High Falls, NY October 2000

Archival Pigment Print - First Printing 2026 Edition of 250

10"x8" image size presented on 17"x11" Arches BFK Rives Paper in a protective plastic sleeve

Jojo Ans, owner of shop Heirloom, studied photography at SUNY New Paltz in the early 1990’s.

About the work:

I photograph with a pinhole camera. The images are exposed on film, and printed in silver gelatin and platinum/palladium. “Primitive” by today’s standards, these traditional techniques are a conduit between the past and the present.

I can’t frame the photos with the pinhole camera; I can’t see what they will reveal. It is as if I stand in a place between the practical and the mystical. With the long exposure time, and the slow process of making the prints, I move against the rushing tide of instant gratification.

So in using this camera and process, collaboration begins between nature, the camera, and myself. Self-portraits reveal an apparition in a white dress; which requires entering, posing and leaving the scene during the uninterrupted exposure. Guided by my intuition, the environment, and surprise.

I also contemplate the archival permanence of the prints and the impermanence of what I capture. The images themselves are not artificially created, but caught in a moment of transition, a time-lapsed moment - between existence and decay. Thus conceiving a dialectical relationship between the craft and the unconscious.