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The light forms the picture and the camera can capture this special moment for ever. In the beginning it was a darkened room with a small hole which projected an image onto the opposite wall or table. This room was called a camera obscura, from the latin „camera obscura“ which means „dark chamber“. This term was first used in 1604 and at the end it was the beginning of what we now call photography. It all started with a box using it’s hole to preserve the ambient situation on a storage material sensitive to light. The pinhole camera was invented and the results are amazing.
Without any optical lens it produces photographs with an astonishing image resolution. The best results are taken with a very small pinhole – that produces sharper images.
In 1999 Michael Nischke first began his work with a british, wooden pinhole camera. At once we was fascinated of the special atmosphere the photographs can produce. From the beginning he concentrated his work on creating portraits, totally unusual for this kind of photography.
He used Polaroid 4x5 inch film to get unique results. And he worked with the tungsten film by Polaroid to get the monochrome blue charisma. Some of his works were done with the special edition of Polaroid Sepia film, which gave the photos the brown character. Very soon he began to realize the concept of people being at the seaside or at the beach of a lake. His work brings us to places in Crete, Germany, Italy, Netherland and Thailand.
„The technique of the pinhole camera has opened a totally new world of photography for me“, he said when opening his first exhibition of large sized prints in 2000 in Germany.
„The pinhole camera allows me to focus on the core of a picture. What fascinates me is the untamed force behind each motif. It takes me beyond any high-tech photography techniques. This is photography on its purest form, which demands unconditional commitment for each shot“.
For the first time Michael Nischke opened this treasure of original 4 x 5 inch
POLAROID works and exhibit the unique original photos at Gallery Tosei Sha in Tokyo. It is a selection of the best portraits and landscape shots he did in 1999 and 2003. What emerged is the storytelling of common situations – very picturesque and inspiring.
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