RVA as Seen Through the Pinhole

Richmond, VA • RVA as Seen Through the Pinhole will open as a part of the First Friday’s ArtWalk, 5p – 9p on Friday, September 5 at Ęlęgba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center, 101 East Broad Street in the downtown RVA arts district at the corner of 1st and Broad. This exhibition of black and white photographs will be available through November 30. The artist, James W. Draper, Jr., produced the photographs using the techniques of pinhole photography.

RVA as Seen Through the Pinhole is a series of photographs depicting scenes around Richmond. This series demonstrates the artist’s fascination with the light tight box or camera obscura and its potential. Says Draper, “The pinhole camera is unconventional photography that challenges the analog in me. The pinhole gives me freedom to go beyond traditional photography.” Because the camera obscura functions like a projector or like a recorder, it can support creativity in the pinhole artist by producing unique images and ideas.

A pinhole camera and imagery to record will be included in the exhibition, and visitors to the cultural center can try it out.

Historically, and according to pinhole expert and enthusiast Anita Chernewski, the image-forming ability of a tiny hole is thought to have been known thousands of years ago by nomadic people of North Africa, who lived in animal skin tents. A pinhole in the tent would project an image of the brilliant scene outside. The pinhole photographic work of Afro Canadian artist Melinda Mollineaux commemorates the forgotten place of Cadboro Bay, where Black people gathered to celebrate Emancipation Day in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Photographer, Draper, with a Masters Degree from Virginia State University, is a retired educator in Richmond Public Schools. He has been a member of the Camera Club of Richmond, National Conference of Artists and the Virginia Educational Media Association, among others. He has taught photography at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, and he has served as a staff photographer at Richmond Free Press.

Draper has exhibited widely around Virginia, and he has received numerous awards and honors in the field.