Organic Photography was my rebellion against the high technology that film photography had become in the mid/late 1980s. In the spring of 1989, while attending Kent State University in Kent Ohio, I began shooting Organic photography. Even back then “organic” was the buzz word for food that was free of artificial stuff. Well photography, as in camera obscura, (pin-hole) is simply photography without anything artificial between the film and the lens; hence Organic Photography.
I like the softened images of my Calabassis Series (shot in Calabassis CA), and lacking the fog of the Pacific coast, I did away with the precision lenses of my 4×5 Sinar with its Rodenstock lens. I simply unscrewed and removed the glass elements leaving only the shutter. I closed down the aperture to f64 and began to test Polaroids. The first images were very exciting but they were not clear enough. I then began to experiment with pinholes in various materials, until he got the best combination.
Organic Photography “is very pure. There is something innocent and unguarded to the images. They seem to have a reflective quality to them, almost as if you are back in your youth.”
JSH
