Justin QUINNELL Analysis.

Justin QUINNELL is a UK based pinhole photography artist who creates his own cameras and photographic paper, exposing them to light. He masters at making weird and sinister photographs. QUINNELL mentioned that from when he was 4 years old he had several operations on his eyes to sort out something; "I remember having a patch on one eye with a small hole to see through." And from then on he was inspired, and eventually became the head of the photography department at a school in Bristol. The kids there couldn't afford cameras but were able to afford cans of coke, so he had got them to make cameras out of their drink cans and he got hooked and obssessed with them himself.

Quinnell has made a career of pinhole photograph since 1989 and the joy of it, he said, is experimenting.

Ideally i would of thought that Quinnell had a theme around his work, concentrating on everyday things and life. But Justin mentioned the the doesn't initially approach his photography with a subject in mind. Instead he makes a camera, see what it does, then relates it's function to a subject.

"That's the way pinhole photographers work... We don't really think in terms of subjects. We find objects then we think, 'what would happen if...'" - Justin QUINNELL

QUINNELL has done many pinhole photographs over time which are highly experimental, mysterious and surreal. However one of my favourite pieces of his work is the smileycam (when the camera is in his mouth) of his son Louis when he was getting to know him - This image was made in the 1990's. I chose to analyse this piece because i am planning to make a pinhole photograph in his style; surrealism, which I am highly inspired by.

Justin Quinnell mentioned that he loves virtually everything about photography, through either a lense or a hole but he was intentionally inspired by a few people; John Blakemore and Paul Hill. And his favourite pinholer is Bethany de Forest.

"I love it because it's really quite uncomfortable and that's fine. Some pictures are a bit contrived. Others are accidental flukes. Some are a bit unnerving. Others, I'll never forget taking them." - Justin QUINNELL.

Justin implied that the smileycam technique is a tough trick to pull off successfully. He says it takes him between 15 and 20 images before he gets a few that he likes. Throughout continuously doing this experiment he has learnt to tape a bit of cellophane on the back of the camera to prevent saliva from dribbling into the film. But with some 110 film and patience anyone could do it.

Sometimes he disguises the cameras with straw and hides them outside, or leaves them about his house for months as a single long exposure, to then see what has been collected.

The pinhole photography above is Justin's favourite he has ever taken, which is called 'The Royal Crescent' as it was his first successful colour images and taken in 1991 when he had to wait for 4 days until the film was processed. A lot of Justins experiments don't or didn't work, but most often his cameras allow accidents or the unknown because they are most interesting.

He has used a wide variety of materials, from fruit to Wellington boots, toilet rolls, traffic cones and Pringles tubes, and taken portraits through holes in a cream cracker. He has only fired them on rockets, thrown them off buildings and bridges, used them as shuttlecocks, held them underwater, taped them on to trains, car windscreen wipers, giant tortoises, forks and snooker cues; anything you can imagine!

In addition, my first reaction to the work of the smileycam of his son was..."How was that made?" Because it looks entirely surreal. Many keywords came to mind when looking at that image; crazy, dark, scary, mysterious and unique. As it's in a composed focused form of a fish eye lense, and has a contrast of both dark areas and colour; like a 'light at the end of the tunnel' it really does bring out that mysterious effect throughout the image. This highly inspires me.