Photo professor views life through a pinhole

Photography professor Nancy Breslin is being featured in an exhibit named "Intervals" with Casey Orr, a professional photographer from Leeds, England at the Visual Arts Center at San Antonio College. The exhibit, which focuses on intervals of time, will run through March.

For the past five years, Breslin said she has been using a pinhole camera to capture passages of time she has spent at restaurants, coffee shops and amusement parks. She said she bought the camera on an impulse and thought it was beautiful.

Different from other cameras, the pinhole camera has no lens, but its tiny opening needs very long exposure time. The exposure time can range from seconds to more than an hour, depending on the amount of the light hitting the scene.

Breslin said she has an on-going, online journal called "Squaremeals: A Pinhole Diary of Dining Out" that records meals she has shared with family and friends. She said she decided to use the name "Squaremeals" because the images created by the camera are square, rather than standard rectangular photos.

Rebecca Dietz, curator of the exhibit, stated in an e-mail message that she chose to feature Breslin and Orr together because they both incorporate a sense of time in their work, but each with a different take.

Orr's work documents her nine-year journey by canal from England to her birthplace in Chester, Pa. Her portraits of the land and sea show the parallel between her journey and the flow of goods and people across the Atlantic in the past.

In contrast, Breslin's work is part of her lifestyle. She has been creating this collection for five years and is continuously adding photos that expose her social life when dining at restaurants and visiting amusement parks.

Dietz said each of Breslin's images captures an interval of time from start to finish. During each interval of exposure, waiters and waitresses are shown bringing food to the table, heads nodding back and forth in conversation and utensils moving. The pinhole camera does not allow the user to control what movements it is catching, which in effect produces a surprising result.

"Ghostly faces, light trails and softly blurred forms stand in stark contrast to stable lights, windows and doors as the film records changes in light and movement on a single frame," she said.

Breslin said her purpose for the blurry silhouettes of individuals is to give more recognition to the actual mealtime.

As a professor at the university, Breslin said she works to share her enthusiasm of art with her students. Her teaching style places emphasis on the quality of light and color and essentially art history.

Breslin said she aims to show her students a different view of life to help them find their inner voice and their own special way to portray the visual world.

Virginia Bradley, chairwoman of the art department, said Breslin's work is extremely beautiful and poetic.

"Nancy's non-traditional darkroom techniques add another dimension to our photography curriculum," Bradley said.

Breslin said she was raised in New Jersey and after being a psychiatrist for 10 years, she left the medical field to study art. After taking classes in painting, she said she was completely blown away. In 2000, Breslin received a master's degree in fine arts from the university.

"I was trying to find my inner muse," Breslin said. "It was self-indulging and helped me in discovering myself as an artist."

In 2003 and 2008, she received Individual Artist Fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts. She also serves as a member of the Newark Arts Alliance on a gallery committee.

Breslin said the "Intervals" show is the furthest distance from home where her work has been displayed. However, she has had solo or two-person shows in Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

From March 5-28, Breslin's pinhole photographs of amusement parks will be on exhibit at the Mezzanine Gallery in Wilmington, Del.

"My pinhole camera is in my purse all the time," she said. "It's an obsession and I do not see this project stopping anytime soon."