Ashley David MFA/PhD, is an interdisciplinary and social practice artist who combines techniques and traditions from ethnography, theatre, community arts, poetry, film and digital media, visual arts, and scholarship to explore questions about community and inclusive place-making. Poetry, prose, and project-based work have featured widely, and she has performed and installed pieces across the U.S. and overseas. As Exquisite Knowing, she collaborates—in the role of consultant, mentor-teacher, and facilitator—with nonprofit organizations, universities, schools, and individuals to tackle issues related to social, economic, and environmental justice and to manifest missions and values as everyday inclusive practices. ashleydavid.com & exquisiteknowing.com
You can see her series, Stomping Grounds, Waltham 2023, in the July 2023 issue.
What is it that interests you about pinhole photography?
I love pinhole photography because the technology and resulting photographs feel lived in and accessible… like human hands, brains, and bodies were necessarily and intimately involved from start to finish. For the Stomping Grounds project, this means that participants can build cameras from up-cycled trash and use their cameras and a direct photographic process to focus and reveal the stories they’d like to share about their everyday landscapes. Resulting images lead us deeper into memory and lived experience, and they spark interesting conversations.
What can a pinhole photograph convey that another photography medium might not?
The extraordinary depth of field and serendipity made possible by pinhole camera photography allows me to leverage medium as metaphor, document, and artifact while simultaneously rendering process as performance. With Stomping Grounds, I’m exploring memory, loss, and transformation in urban and rural communities in conversation with the residents who comprise them, and the pinhole analog process—from building cameras to shooting and printing images—is as vital as the resulting images. No other photographic medium would be as holistically direct and everyday as this one.
How did you first decide to begin taking pinhole photographs and how long have you been practicing?
I was really lucky that my South Georgia (USA) granddaddy was a professional photographer and that he loved little more than including me in his process from the time I was born. I didn’t much like modeling, but I loved the darkroom; the click of his Hasseblads and their “weird” flip-up viewfinder; and chinging down dusty dirt roads in his blue VW Beetle to search for adventure and subjects. He died when I was ten, but the experiences we shared remain some of my most formative memories and artistic influences. His book collection continues to teach and inspire. Pinhole photography entered the picture separately, in 1975, when I was nine and we built cameras from Quaker Oats boxes for a special class at my school on the beach in southern California (USA). To be honest, only the camera-making made an impression. The impression stuck however, and for Stomping Grounds development in the fall of 2022, I combined the influences—my grandfather’s deep and sophisticated take on image-making and community engagement with the delightfully simple technology of camera obscura meets upcycled garbage. I won’t lie… after decades spent neck deep in other media, the learning curve this year was steep, but it feels a lot like coming home and honoring my roots.
I find that some pinhole photographers are interested in the art of the form while some are more interested in mastering the technical aspects. Where do you fit on that spectrum?
Hahahaha! I’m all about form, concept, and bigger picture process. This means that mastering technique and technical aspects is necessary, but I don’t relish it. Portioning millimeters to achieve precise tiny holes by punching imprecise sewing needles into aluminum cans to make lenses, light metering with a clumsy app on my phone, factoring in air temps for chemicals, and rigorously documenting exposures are the stuff of waking nightmares. I have to remind myself that making friends with my idea of drudgery is valuable, and I usually feel pretty pleased with having done it once I slog through. Mostly though, I love when the technical cooperates seamlessly with the formal and conceptual to illuminate something beautiful and relevant.
Can you tell us a little bit about the technique you most often use to take your photographs? What is it that appeals to you about this particular technique?
…this is a complex question because I’m simultaneously traversing so many media—community engagement, ethnography, storytelling, performance, and photography. So, I’ll share a typical Stomping Grounds shoot: collaborate with community members to plot a walking route; load up cameras, tripod, notebook, and Janie the dog in the Stomping Grounds Mobile (a converted dog stroller); walk until a spot resonates for contemporary, historical, and/or formal reasons; set up tripod and shoot four custom formats with four homemade cameras; keep walking, talking, and observing until we finish the route; head to the darkroom to print images; share images and stories on social media and invite additional participation and storytelling. I love this technique because it’s active, variously engaged, grounded in community and landscape, and wildly susceptible to serendipity.
Where do you go for inspiration for your photography?
That’s easy (and probably not very helpful to share): everywhere!
It seems like pinhole photographers have a special interest and take joy in experimenting—both with the devices they use (often homemade) and the techniques they use. Have you tried other alternative photography methods?
Oh yes, more as experience than experiment, but I’ve played around with just about any kind of image-making contraption and technology, both still and moving, that you could imagine.
Are there any projects you’re working on now or have worked on in the past that you’d like to tell us about?
I’ve mentioned Stomping Grounds throughout, and it’s my pinhole raison d’être. The Waltham, Massachusetts (USA) pilot project produced the images in Pinhole Poetry, and I’m planning to iterate the project in a diverse spectrum of rural and urban communities anywhere and everywhere I can wrangle funding to support a local project. In the meanwhile, I’ve just returned to New Mexico (USA) to finish up a book-length essay project I began in 2021 but was med-evac’d off—cancer-interruptus style—in early 2022. I had spent almost a year traveling and camping with Janie the dog along the 2000-mile span of the Rio Grande watershed—beginning at the mouth on the Tex-Mex border in the Gulf of Mexico and spiraling my way up to the headwaters on the eastern edge of the Continental Divide in Colorado—to explore questions about belonging at the intersection of wilderness, indigeneity, and sustainability. Stomping Grounds emerged from the chaos and debility of major illness recovery, and now that I’m well enough to return to the river project, I’d love to do a little strategic blending and add pinhole photography to this project, too.