John W. Leopold | Apse End of Petr Baznica (St. Peter's Church) | Pinhole Photograph from a paper negative | 2003

The images in this exhibition came about as a direct result of my participation in the U.S. State Department's "Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program."  During the entire 2002-2003 academic year I the opportunity to teach at the Riga College of Applied Arts (Rigas Dizaina un Makslas Vidusskola) in Riga, Latvia.
Latvia is one of the three Baltic States that won their independence in 1991 when the former Soviet Union collapsed.  The current "Republic of Latvia" is making the adjustment from Communism to Democracy, and the difficult conversion to a capitalist economy.  This adjustment has resulted in numerous social challenges; unemployment and poverty are among the biggest of these. 

Most of my students were very poor by American standards, and so I found that many of my "standard lessons" were simply not possible due to the fact that it was impossible for the students to purchase the additional art materials necessary for the projects.  I found this to be especially true with the students who participated in the photography studios that I volunteered to teach in the evenings after regular classes.

From the outset I found that I really had to be inventive, adaptable, and resourceful in order to accomplish anything at all.    As it turned out only 2 students out of the 30 that signed up for the photo studio had access to a 35mm camera.  This made it necessary for me to find a way for each student to have a low-cost and reliable camera.  Furthermore, I had to find it quickly or risk losing the interest, enthusiasm, and participation of 99% of my students!  I found the perfect solution in pinhole photography. 

A pinhole camera is nothing more than a light-tight container that is punctured with the point of a needle and fitted with a piece of black tape for a shutter.  The camera itself can be manufactured in less than an hour and costs only pennies to produce.  Additionally it has no moving parts to ever breakdown thereby guaranteeing years of faithful service.

I built a pinhole camera in class to "show" the students how to begin building their own.  I say "show" due to the fact that at that point I spoke almost no Latvian, and had to rely heavily on visual communication.  The students were polite and told me what a nice camera I had made, but they clearly did not believe that what they had seen me construct would ever be able to make a photograph.  So to win their trust, I immediately took a picture out of the classroom window, developed the negative, and printed a finished photograph.  This was all done in a matter of 15 minutes in the faculty toilet, our "darkroom."

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