Steven Bower
Pinhole Photographs
Cold dead film and things on hand
Steven creates his photographs using a homemade wooden medium format film pinhole camera and expired B&W film. He creates many of his scenes with simple materials like popsicle sticks, balsa wood, and paper to deceive the eye. He develops his film in his bathtub.
Steven and I met in the early 2000’s on flickr — we were both exploring lo-fi photography using homemade or cheap plastic cameras, and before long, began talking about music and sharing favorite songs and artists. We became old-school pen pals at that point, sending each other postcards and mixtapes (CDs) between South Carolina and Washington, a practice which continues today, and brings me much joy.
I asked Steven about his process and subject matter, and was curious what his preferred darkroom soundtrack is. Our conversation, and his gallery of images, is below.
I hear he’s got a fridge full of old dead film — I can only hope he loads up his camera and builds and shoots stuff again soon.
Dead Boots - Pushin’ Up Daisies
Image below: Subterranean Homesick Blues
I’d love to hear about your process and approach, how you created these
In general, I started creating and photographing these little sets/dioramas during graduate school. I was working all day 7 days a week, and really had no time to go out and photograph cool stuff. So I just started building things in the evenings and illuminating them with a set of lights in order to take the photographs. Most everything I build is made out of simple materials like popsicle sticks, balsa wood, string, paper, foam board, hot glue, sticks and leaves. My Dremel tool gets heavy use.
The flooded pieces have no particular connection to anything in my life. I was just trying to come up with ways to transform the pristine dioramas that I had built after taking the initial photographs - I wanted to add an interesting dimension. I considered burning them, but felt too connected to the pieces to entirely destroy them like that. The flooded house exterior image was set up by sticking the diorama in a lake. All the debris and flood damage in the house interior images was made with strong coffee, coffee grounds, and oregano.
It is incredibly nostalgic for me to think about being a poor graduate student sitting in my dark apartment working on these projects at night — drinking cheap brown liquor, and developing the film in my bathtub.
Tell me about those boots. You still have those?
Those are indeed my personal boots. I have taken probably 6 to 10 photos with them as part of the series. The sole of one of the boots is branded with my initials. My favorite photograph is the one where the boots appear to be hanging from a ceiling. The boots (held up with sticks inside of them) are actually in a lake, and the image is inverted. The long exposure of the pinhole camera (~30 seconds) blurred out any motion of the water so that it appears as an opaque surface. The pinhole camera is a tool that really allows me to play with the subject.
What do you typically listen to in the darkroom?
I created a playlist which reflects what I usually listen to. It is definitely darker than the stuff I typically share with you. Trent Reznor/NIN's industrial sounds just seem to work well in a darkroom when I'm shaking film. The NIN Ghosts albums and his soundtracks with Atticus Ross are great ambient background music.
