How JE Piper took his prize-winning image
with his real Krappy Kamera�

An interview with Norman Borden
� JE Piper


JE Piper of Brooklyn, NY won first prize in the 2014 Krappy Kamera competition with his stunning image of the much-photographed Brooklyn Bridge. In this
Q & A, JE reveals how he made his camera, the negative - and his prize-winning picture.

camera
JE's Krappy Kamera
How did you make the camera? 

I used black cardboard held together with darkroom tape; there's a T-nut at the bottom for the tripod. Equally important is the negative material, which is watercolor paper that's coated with cyanotype emulsion. The camera has to have a really large aperture with a short focal length because the cyanotype medium is so slow.  The aperture is less than f/1. The actual lens is from a Kodak Duaflex; the camera design is based on cameras from the 1840s that I saw in museums and books



When did you start using the cyanonegative process?

During Soho Photo's 2007 Krappy Kamera competition, I was quite taken with a print by John Weaver, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin (so much so I bought the photo). He had devised a way to use cyanotype emulsion on paper as a negative material, scanning the resulting image into Photoshop and hitting the invert tab to make a positive. Of course, the light and dark areas of the image reversed themselves, but the inverse of the cyanotype's Prussian blue translated into lovely amber and sepia tones. There was also the appeal of combining an antique analogue process with modern digital technology for a uniquely artistic result. After Dr. Weaver explained how the process worked, I began using it for my own work.

How did you photograph the Brooklyn Bridge?

I mounted the camera on a table tripod-- the exposure took an hour, so I was standing on the bridge talking to people and showing them prints when they asked about what I was doing. One of the fun things about this process is that it often becomes a somewhat social occasion, engaging in conversation with passersby.

I've taken a lot of photos of the bridge, using both cyanonegatives and pinhole, but I've stopped because of security concerns -- I was using my pinhole camera in Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is right underneath the bridge, when a park ranger stopped me from making pictures. I liked taking pictures of the bridge because people have been doing so for over 130 years, and after all that time I liked the idea of trying to do something new with this much depicted and much written-about subject.

One thing I like about taking an entire hour to expose a picture is that how often in our busy lives do we stop for a whole hour to contemplate a building or a scene?  I'm glad the process makes me do that.

I also like that when you're making a photograph, you're doing it from the ground up -- you make the camera, you make the negative material, right down to the final print. In fact, I need to make a new cyanonegative camera out of wood, the way I've done with pinhole cameras.


What kinds of work do you like doing?

Most of my fine-art work is with pinhole cameras, all in film; I also use a vintage Diana 151 quite a bit.

A great deal of my work is documentary architectural photos. (I have a master's degree in historic preservation, which is how I started with that.) I've extensively photographed the vernacular architecture of Willets Point in Queens, the changing architecture of Coney Island, among many other subjects.  I wish I had more of a showcase for that work.

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This is the last week to see JE Piper's Brooklyn Bridge and all the other
competition winners ...

The Krappy Kamera show runs through next Saturday, March 1.
Gallery Hours: Wed-Sun, 1 to 6 PM.