About Wheeler Matthews

In today’s instant-gratification world of hi-tech digital cameras and computer imagery, why would a photographer choose to use a hand-made wooden box to take photographs?

There is no viewfinder in a pinhole camera. There is no lens. The photographer had to be able to “see” using intuition and experience to learn what it will reveal. In A New Instrument of Vision (1936), Lazlo Moholy-Nagy refers to a “slow seeing” vision of photography, an interpretation of photography influenced by the aesthetic-philosophic concepts that circumscribe painting.

With prolonged exposures ranging from one to several minutes, and a 0.2mm (pin)hole providing infinite focus, the pinhole photographer forges a more intimate relationship with the subject being captured.

Marion Wheeler and Amber Matthews met on a kayaking excursion in the Mergui Archipelego of Myanmar in 2001 and use their pinhole cameras to explore Asia Pacific and beyond.