Dave Wise struggled with talking as a kid so non-verbal communication became his focus. His first foray into the darkroom came at 3 years old. He left school at 16 and, unable to settle into regular employment, hitchhiked to France with the aim of joining the French Foreign Legion. He’s since wandered through over 80 countries, documenting his experiences using a variety of means including pinhole photography, film, poetry, and prose. His photos have featured in over 30 exhibitions, and his work has appeared in the same amount of books. In 1999 he founded the Medway art collective Dilute To Taste, and in 2002 created Urban Fox Press with Billy Childish, which published over 50 books by Medway creatives. From 2004 to 2006 he organized the Medway Independent Arts Festival with Zara Carpenter. In 2008 he founded Hakim & Slater Press, which continues to this day. Dave worked as a sports and travel journalist before emigrating to Canada in 2015. He enjoys marathons, and has won the 24 hour Canadian running Championships a couple of times. Running-induced vulnerability, as well as yogic breathing and the lowering of energy, plays a part in his creative process. He began painting in 2021 and had his first exhibition in this medium in May 2022 in New York State.
You can see his photography series, Waterfalls, in the July 2023 issue.
What is it that interests you about pinhole photography?
The artform, if practiced in the non-digital, low-fi style, allows me to put more of the best of myself into the making of it. Making the images helps me slow down, to be less controlling and more thoughtful, and I believe the resulting images can portray the world as it actually is – blurry lines indicate the reality of various atoms dancing around each other – rather than the hard line, limited vision that is digital. Pinhole has never felt gimmicky to me, and that’s not something I can say about much these days.
What can a pinhole photograph convey that another photography medium might not?
Other photography mostly portrays the world as humans or machines see it. Pinhole conveys the reality of life as we scientifically believe it to be. Pinhole can have far more in common with painting or poetry (your magazine is so well named) than with more modern forms of photography.
How did you first decide to begin taking pinhole photographs and how long have you been practicing?
In about 2002 a friend, Wolf Howard, was making them and I had an immediate, strong reaction to his work. I absolutely loved it. And his images seemed so much more important than any of the other forms of photography (film, digital) that I’d been practicing since I was a kid. I asked Wolf to show me how to do it. So I’ve been making pinholes now for about 21 years.
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?
I’m most interested in the process of making art. The process of creation has to be what I consider to be a decent use of life. So sitting at a computer for hours making images look ‘good’, as many photographers do, is not for me. What I’m most interested in is being a good role model – trying to make art, and live, in what I consider to be the right way – and in trying to work out what the image and subject needs from me personally, and how I can best provide it. I’m not interested in the technical aspects very much at all.
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?
In general my approach is that I don’t want to fully control the creative process, I want it to be a collaboration with chance, or the world, however you’d like to put it. I go halfway to meet the world by walking out the door with my pinhole and an idea of what I’d like to shoot, and then I invite the world to come join me. This is my technique I guess. I don’t use a tripod, so this means the environment decides where my camera goes in order to stay still for its long exposures. I also don’t use a light meter. Sometimes I judge exposures from experience, at other times I let the world tell me when to close the shutter. For instance, I’ll start the exposure and decide that when something significant happens I’ll close it. Once a woodpecker landed on my camera, that was my sign to end the exposure! I shoot straight onto photographic paper so I can easily develop my work wherever I am. My darkroom has been a variety of hotel bathrooms over the years, a tent, even outside under a huge leafy tree on a dark night. So partly it’s all about experimentation, about letting go, about circumnavigating the potential brainwashing that most of us have been exposed to, and the urge to dominate.. And partly it’s about, simply, trying to get an image I can feel somewhat content with when all circumstances and whims have been considered.
Where do you go for inspiration for your photography?
I read a lot of art-themed books and watch documentaries (mainly on painters from various cultures), and visit museums and cultural events often. Life also directs me. I ask, what does the world I live in need from me, right now? Does it need another guy dominating stuff, and propping up the capitalist patriarchy as they do so? Does it need another confessional artist? Does the wave confess in the time between rising from the ocean and crashing on shore? I’m unsure of it all, so at the moment I mostly make images of nature, or subjects that contain somewhat positive emotions for me.
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?
Solargraphy. I came across it in about 2005 and thought it looked interesting, so ever since I’ve been putting tin can cameras out and recording the sun’s path over wherever I live, or am staying for an extended period of time. I’ve also tried making images on photo paper with old SLR cameras, no pinhole at all. You can get some very interesting in-camera solarisation-like images that way if the sun is at about 11 o’clock. Both these styles have at times felt gimmicky and controlling but despite this, I’ve kept them on the backburner. Probably because the results offer such an unusual view of our world.
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’m currently creating montages influenced by the artist David Hockney’s ‘Joiner’ work, which involve making up to 100 individual pinhole images and then piecing them together into an image that presents a unique experience of the subject matter and its environment. I’m also just starting a pinhole club together with other artists living in the ‘Golden Horseshoe’ – the towns from Toronto to Niagara.