Diana Hooper Bloomfield has been photographing for over 20 years. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Diana has received numerous awards for her images, including a New Jersey State Visual Art Fellowship in 1985 and, more recently, Regional Artist Project Grants from the United Arts of Raleigh in 1997 and in 2001. Her photographs have been purchased for several public collections, including the North Carolina State University Gallery of Art and Design, the Rocky Mount Art Center, and the collection of the North Carolina State Fair. Diana studied photography in Newtown, Pennsylvania, at Bucks County Community College, and in NYC, at the International Center of Photography and at The New School. She currently lives in Raleigh and teaches photography at the North Carolina State University Crafts Center in Raleigh and at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies in Durham.

I have always loved images--both looking at them and making them. I’ve often felt, however, that still photography can be very limiting. Short of actual film-making, I wanted a way to make still images that captured more of the essence of a person or place, rather than simply continue to document what I (and everyone else) could clearly see.

To capture a person (or place) in a single image--as if in freeze-frame--is difficult, if not impossible. The pinhole camera, with its long exposures and unusual perspectives, plays with this notion of time and space and offers a fluidity that one doesn’t often find in still photography. Sometimes, the sharpest lens and the “best” cameras, while offering the ultimate in print clarity, still fail at clarity of vision. I love the dream-like quality and timelessness of pinhole imagery, not to mention the sense of freedom and liberation--the element of surprise--that I rarely experience when using a “regular” camera.