The results were nothing short of amazing!  The students were thrilled at the prospect of being able to learn photography and to actually build their very own camera.  I was so impressed with the results, that even though I had several conventional cameras with me, I opted to continue using the pinhole camera (Bunja fotoaparats, in Latvian).  In April I presented the photos that you see here in an exhibition at the school, much to the delight of the larger student body and school staff.  I was told at the time that I was the first artist to ever exhibit pinhole photographs in Latvia, a very special bonus to the experience.

On an esthetic level, I find that the pinhole images possess a quality that I can only explain as that of "memory".  The low-tech methods and materials seem to add an evocative feeling to the images that resonates in me as an artist.  However, it is not my goal to produce sentimental images.  Rather I want to use the evocative qualities of the black and white images attempt to relate to the general quality of memory extant in all of us.  By this I mean that I am trying to produce images that visually strike a cord in our memories in a manner similar to the way in which poets use carefully chosen words to evoke a timeless state of being.  A state of being where we can be both the participant and the observer, creating, watching, and recalling events from our individual and our collective past.