With a newly opened exhibition and accompanying book, this project by Antonia Small and Shutter Hub member Amy Rockett-Todd explores their mutual interest in pinhole photography. As with many of the best collaborations it was based on a lucky accident…
What began as a trek through the woods towards Fairy Beach, with canned chairs atop the heads of her children, fusing the paths of two wellie-wearing women … Amy Rockett-Todd met Antonia Small on that rocky beach the summer of 2012. As Jack, Antonia’s jack Russell, perched himself atop a nearby rock, the two discovered they were both ‘pinholers’.
A chance meeting on a quiet empty slip of land, a stone's throw from Andrew Wyeth's childhood home “Eight Bells” … on this beach which isn't even visible at high tide, the two found themselves stepping into a visual pinhole dialogue that would span almost 2000 miles and 13 months.
They began in April 2013, on Worldwide Pinhole Day, with their wooden Zero Image Cameras with 120 roll-film, shooting images specific to their own artistic visions as well as the contrasts of their varied regions – the flatlands of Oklahoma and the rugged coast of Maine. Each image from both artists includes a backstory, a personal account of the experiences of discovery and image capture.
These backstories can be found alongside all 26 exhibition images within their 90 page book titled Baker’s Dozen : A Pinhole Dialogue, and can be purchased at TAC Gallery (9 E MB Brady, Tulsa OK) during the exhibition (April 1-30, 2016) or online at Blurb.com here.
Amy Rockett-Todd, a native of North Carolina, has been living and working as a designer, studio art and photographer in the flatlands of Tulsa, Oklahoma. She began her professional life working with local architecture firms as well as an environmental graphics and signage design firm. She received her Bachelor of Science in Interior Architecture and Studio Arts Minor from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her current art explores the relationships between the hand and technology through alternative photographic processes and traditional black and white film photography.
Antonia Small is a stage performer turned photographer who has lived in Paris and New York, but now calls the small fishing village of Port Clyde, Maine home. She holds a B.A. from Vermont College, certificates from the SALT Center for Documentary Studies and the Maine Photographic Workshops. Influenced by her theater and dance performance training, Toni likens the frame of her twin-lens to a proscenium arch. She is equally interested by the mystery of a ten-minute performance exposure in front of her pinhole camera, or the “happening” of submerging her camera underwater.
You can see the exhibition at TAC Gallery, 9 E MB Brady, Tulsa OK, USA, April 1-30, 2016. For more information visit the website here.
You can see more work by Amy Rockett-Todd at her Shutter Hub profile here.
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