No Lens. No Viewfinder. Only Time: Photographs That Take Minutes or Hours

Not a moment. A duration.

Mihaela from Mihaela’s Garden, 1996, pinhole photography on 120 roll film, lith print. © Przemek Zajfert.

It was summer 2004. I was sitting with Walter Jens in his library. A small black box with a tiny hole collected light for an hour and a half. Months later, he was diagnosed with dementia. The image still exists. It is the last portrait of a man who was entirely himself.

The Eye That Doesn’t Look

When you hold a pinhole camera for the first time, you instinctively search for a viewfinder. You turn the device, peer from the side, and ask:

How do I know what I’m capturing?

The answer is uncomfortable — and precisely for that reason, so valuable: You don’t know.

You estimate. You think geometrically. You follow the light — not with your eyes, but with your mind. You imagine the composition, calculate angles, light, duration. Seconds, minutes, sometimes hours.

What initially seems like a disadvantage is, in truth, the essence: you cannot be faster than the situation. You must surrender to it.

Walter Jens, 1.5 hours, 2004, from the photo book Camera Obscura Tübingen. © Przemek Zajfert.

Walter Jens, Summer 2004

I photographed him in his library. Exposure time: an hour and a half. We sat with our backs to the bookshelves. In front of us stretched a garden bathed in sunlight. We spoke; he stood, reached for a book, put it back down. Everything happened — and remained. Not as a sequence of moments, but as a layering of time.

Months later, he was diagnosed with dementia. It marked the beginning of the dissolution of his intellect. The camera didn’t know this. It only recorded what the light gave it: a man, a garden, an hour and a half of a summer day.

In retrospect, there is something over this image that I had not planned. It is the last portrait of wholeness — created in a moment when that wholeness was already ending.

Ernst Bloch’s armchair, Tübingen, Gastl Bookstore, 2004, from the photo book Camera Obscura Tübingen. © Przemek Zajfert.

Ernst Bloch’s Armchair

In Tübingen stood the armchair of Ernst Bloch — the chair where the philosopher had spent decades reading and teaching. I set up the camera in the morning on a homemade tripod. The owner watched it all day to ensure no one touched the camera. In the evening, I collected it.

The chair is empty. And yet there is something there: a presence, a weight, an absence that says more than presence. Bloch wrote about hope — about the Not-Yet, about what is still to come. An empty chair that has collected a full day of light seems to me a fitting image for that.

Stuttgart, one day at Karlsplatz, 1997, pinhole photography on 120 roll film, lith print. © Przemek Zajfert.

Stuttgart: One Day, One Image

Just before Christmas, I set my black box on Karlsplatz in Stuttgart and left it there for the entire day. The sun slowly moved across the frame, leaving a streak of pure light. The people who walked through the square have disappeared. Only the light remains. No metaphor. Just physics — and sometimes physics and meaning converge.

© Przemek Zajfert.

The Black Box

Those who knew me knew the black box. For 25 years, I carried a black cube through European cities — a mobile gallery. I set it up on streets, squares, markets, and waited. Hours passed in which nothing happened.

Over time, I noticed a pattern: the images sold better when I told the story of how they were made. People weren’t buying the picture — they were buying the story behind it: the encounter, the exposure time, the waiting. This article is that story.

Paris, Arc de Triomphe, 2003, 2004, pinhole photography on 120 roll film, lith print. © Przemek Zajfert.

The Craft of Waiting

In Paris, in front of the Arc de Triomphe, I worked without a mechanical shutter. The camera stood on the tripod, the hole open. I covered it carefully — briefly opening it when a car stopped, then closing it again. The result is not a photograph of a moment, but a selection of moments, decided second by second. The photographer becomes the shutter. The hand becomes a tool of time.

The girl on the beach, 2004, pinhole photography on 120 roll film, lith print. © Przemek Zajfert.

On the Atlantic, Ten Seconds

Not every decision takes long. On the Atlantic coast, I held the camera for ten seconds. The movement of people, the light on the water, my own trembling — all of it is in the image. I didn’t need a scraper like Gerhard Richter. Physics did it on its own.

The girl on the bench, Lucerne, 2004, pinhole photography on 120 roll film, lith print. © Przemek Zajfert.

In Lucerne: The Girl Who Was Half There

In Lucerne, a girl sat on a bench. She was only there for half the time — then she stood and left. In the image, she is half-transparent. You cannot stage this. You can only wait — and sometimes you are lucky.

Rhine Falls, 2006, pinhole photography on 120 roll film, lith print. © Przemek Zajfert.

The Rhine Falls

At the Rhine Falls in Schaffhausen, the rushing water becomes a calm, almost tangible surface. Motion cancels itself out. The pinhole camera does not photograph the water. It photographs the time in which it flows.

Berlin, Brandenburg Gate, 2004, pinhole photography on 120 roll film, lith print. © Przemek Zajfert.

Brandenburg, Just Before Sunset

In front of the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, a group of people sat in a circle, silent, wordless, in the middle of the city. The sun shone directly through the gate. They are in the image — and at the same time barely there. Their stillness has been recorded. You don’t see what they do. You see how long they do it.

Pinhole photography on 120 roll film, lith print, studio stairs, Stuttgart West, 1998. © Przemek Zajfert.

The Studio, 11 a.m.

In my studio in Stuttgart, light came through a particular opening around 11 a.m., hitting the stairs, lingering for about half an hour. I knew this. I waited for it. Perhaps this is the true secret of this photography: attention to change. Not the change perceived by the quick eye, but by the patient one.

Why Few Images Are an Advantage

Today, more photos are taken daily than entire lifetimes once saw. Most will never be seen again. The pinhole camera forces a decision. Each shot costs time, attention, sometimes an entire day. Because every image has gone through these questions, it carries weight.

No series shots. No backups. Only the one image that emerged — because the light fell that way, because I waited, because time did what time does.

The Hole Is Not the Camera

After forty years, I have reached a simple conviction:

Time is the camera.

The hole only allows what time then does. I can build a frame, create a condition — but the image emerges without me. In the dark, slowly, over minutes or hours. This is not a weakness of the technique. This is the most honest form of photography I know.

You give up control — and receive something back that you did not plan. Most of the time, it is better.

Technical Note, Camera, Film, Light

With a pinhole camera, geometry determines the aesthetics of the image. That’s why, before I build a camera, I already have the image in mind. © Przemek Zajfert.

Most of the shots were made with cameras I built myself: small black boxes for roll film, without a lens, without a shutter. Each camera is intended for exactly one exposure. This sounds like a limitation — it is the opposite. Those who can only shoot once think twice.

I use pinhole cameras, shooting single 6×6 cm frames on Agfa APX 100 or Kodak Tri-X 400. © Przemek Zajfert.

The darkroom is just as important as the act of photographing. I can’t imagine having my film developed anywhere else. © Przemek Zajfert.

Exposure and development belong together. I work with a reduced developer, Rodinal 1:100, long and soft. The negative loses contrast but gains detail. During enlarging in lith printing, shadows develop first, then midtones. No image looks like the other. The pinhole camera begins the image. The lith process completes it. Both work with time. Both give back something you did not plan.

My gallery in Munich — where stories meet photographs. Telling them, sharing them, and selling the images that carry them is what I love most. © Patrick Zajfert.

**Walter Jens** (8 March 1923–9 June 2013) was a German philologist, literature historian, critic, university professor and writer.

A lith print is an alternative photographic printing process…

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