I began working with a pinhole camera in 1981, following art school. It was given to me by a friend. It consisted of a fully automatic, consumer market, SLR camera body with a pinhole attachment as lens. The tiny aperture of the pinhole combined with automatic exposure enabled some interesting indeterminacies. Taking a picture became a performative and architectonic process of being with a camera within a spatial field. The long exposure time made necessary by the extremely small aperture of the pinhole necessitated a committed yet improvisatory approach to the act of taking a picture.

I worked with this apparatus for the next six years as I moved from place to place: from San Francisco to New York, to Italy for an extended period and to Paris for a visit. I also took train journeys to Montana, New Mexico and Los Angeles.

The project became a travelogue of sorts, as well as a documentation of being-in-place. Hence, the name of the series: Pinhole Topologue.

Documenting cities and thinking about place brought me to an interest in architecture and urbanism, and thus design, which led me to do graduate work in visual communication. During my first year I designed a book based on the pinhole work, with the title From Dad to Derrida: Light Readings. This closed the chapter of art making for a time, though my interest in art led me to work in graphic design for art museums.