Photo: Igor Bryakilev
Pinhole Kirkenes
Igor Bryakilev is an St Petersburg based pinhole photographer. A pinhole camera is a camera without a lens, a lightproof box with a small hole in one side where light passes through and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box.
To Igor Bryakilev technique is essential. This is how he explained it to the Russian magazine Fotosfera: ‘Before starting with pinhole photography I idolized the instrument. The camera was a magical object, and the contemporary camera certainly is a technological masterpiece. It is a concentration of knowledge from several talented people. These engineers, however, with all their good intentions, have liberated the photographer from not only the technical routine, but also the need for reflection. The primitive camera, such as I have, stimulates you to get the knowledge. With other words, I am not buying knowledge and experience as a product; I am getting it through practice and through reading books. This kind of routine is a part of the creative process. It took me 15 minutes to make the first camera. After I had seen the first results, I never use normal cameras.’
Bryakilev is convinced that the less art there is in photography, the better it is. For Barents Spektakel 2015 Bryakilev depicts cityscapes and rural parts of Sør-Varanger.