Marian Roth
I have been making pictures with pinhole cameras for about 15 years, being drawn by their apparent simplicity and intensely personal quality. With pinhole photography one must be willing to let inspiration and synchronicity, more than any cerebral process, make the picture. Everything is trial and error, and every time you change the camera the process begins again.
The simplicity of the pinhole camera is a little misleading, as it often takes days or weeks to get a new camera going and often a whole day to get one or two useable images. I enjoy the struggle, knowing I am actually "making" a picture, instead of simply "taking" it. The long exposures (20 seconds to 20 minutes) permit accidents and the unknown to manifest, so the final pictures is, most often, a surprise. I love the mystery of not really knowing what I will get and the joy of making a picture with something as ordinary as a tin can.
-MR