Yasmin Zadeh Balbuena is a photographer and educator born in London and currently based in Barcelona. Trained as a graphic designer at Camberwell College of Arts, she went on to work in live audiovisuals and light installations and now specializes in photography and art education.
You can view her collection of photos, La Cueva, in the January 2024 issue.
What is it that interests you about pinhole photography?
Although I love digital photography, I feel something has been lost in the ever-evolving realm of technology where we are surrounded by instantaneous images. Pinhole photography forces us to slow down and embrace a more tactile, experimental style of image-making. To me it serves as a form of meditation as well as an art-form. The feeling of anticipation and excitement when I am waiting for the images to appear is to me incomparable.
What can a pinhole photograph convey that another photography medium might not?
I feel there is a poesy to pinhole images that is difficult to capture through other photographic mediums. When we work directly in contact with photographic paper or film, surrendering ourselves to the light, a different dialogue is created, one which bridges the divide between interior and exterior realms and allows for an aspect of our unconscious to be transferred to the image. The unpredictability and dream-like quality of the images that ensue are, to me, a unification of the artist’s heart, soul and being.
How did you first decide to begin taking pinhole photographs and how long have you been practicing?
I have been working with analogue photography since my early teens when my father built me my first darkroom under the stairs, but I had never explored the pinhole process until I began teaching photography myself, fifteen years ago. I wanted to take my students back to the basic principles of light and where it all began, with the camera obscura. I fell in love with the process and loved seeing my students faces light up when they saw their images appear. I stopped practicing for a while but took it up again more seriously during the pandemic, when I was drawn once more to this process and began to utilise it also as a form of art therapy, to help quiten the mind and let the soul speak, the essence of meditation.
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?
Although the technical aspects of this art form interest me, the cameras I use when experimenting with this technique are very simple and I like it this way. I prefer to let my intuition be my guide and let my senses take over.
Where do you go for inspiration for your photography?
My biggest source of inspiration has always been the natural world in its many forms whether it be the sense of isolation and peace I find when walking through a forest, to the beautiful array of shapes and forms to be found in botanical gardens and urban trees. The sense of calm and balance being amongst nature evokes is one of the main themes I aim to capture in my work.
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 am currently devising a series workshops that combine aspects of mindfulness, meditation and pinhole photography which I will be delivering to young people and adults in several locations in the North of Spain, where I currently reside. I am working on an ongoing pinhole series which investigates how the pinhole process can be used as a way of aestheticising the intimacy and abstraction of our subconsciouses.