Project

Beautiful Places. Ugly Pictures?

A camera, a tiny hole and no glass anywhere in it. Out on the Saxer Lücke with a homemade camera obscura lens: raw, veiled images of whatever is left of the light.

Type
Gallery
Location
Sax, Switzerland
Project
2026
Published
23 September 2026

116

The idea

The idea itself has been waiting since 2022, when I first used a camera obscura. More precisely, I was inside one. Four years later, I built my own lens for my camera body. This "lens" isn't a regular lens at all, since it has neither glass nor an adjustable aperture. But there is a tiny hole, which does all the work on its own. I only fitted a plain UV filter on the front, which helps keep dust out of the camera.

Beautiful Places. Ugly Pictures?
This is the "lens". The only gass element is the UV filter on the front.
Beautiful Places. Ugly Pictures?
The hole itself is around f/170.

Infinite depth of field, infinite patience

One peculiar property of a lens-free image is that it is practically equally (un)sharp everywhere. There is no sharp transition between foreground and background, and no bokeh, which modern photography loves to play with. The same soft, grainy equality holds every plane together. In return, the exposure time grows, because very little light passes through an aperture of around f/170. Photography can once again become a slow process, in which patience is part of the technique.

Why dirty, why raw?

The flaws of a pinhole, such as vignetting, stray light, dust and loss of contrast, are not really flaws, but natural properties of the system.

The result is something like beautiful landscapes rendered in an ugly but characterful way. The beauty of the landscape remains, but the rendering doesn't pamper you. That tension is what interests me: a raw, slightly uncertain image is closer to how our memory works than a perfect photograph. We don't keep details, we keep mood, patches of light, a veiled view.

A pinhole camera is about how much you have to let go of in order to see. Everything that is complicated in modern lenses is missing here, and still an image is born. The hole doesn't filter, doesn't correct, doesn't interpret. There are no coatings, no focus motors, no corrective elements. There is something alive and natural in it: the way light passes through a tiny hole on its own, drawing the image of the outside world onto the back wall of the box. Perhaps it is the most honest camera: it only shows what remains of the light after passing through a very small opening.

Monochrome, wide-angle photograph of a bicycle parked on a paved courtyard, reflected in a glass door with a prominent handle.
First-person monochrome view from a bicycle handlebar while riding down a curved paved road with motion blur.
Monochrome, slightly distorted analog photograph of a bicycle parked in front of a stacked pile of firewood.
Monochrome pinhole photograph of a narrow dirt path winding through a dense forest with dappled sunlight filtering through the trees.
Monochrome, slightly blurred photograph of two people walking along a narrow trail beneath a towering, textured rock face.
Monochrome pinhole photograph of jagged mountain peaks rising above a grassy slope with three tiny figures in the distance.
Monochrome pinhole photograph of a narrow dirt path winding up a grassy slope toward a rocky peak under a cloudy sky, with soft vignetting and blurred edges.
Monochrome landscape showing a narrow dirt path through grassy slopes leading towards distant mountains under a cloudy sky, captured with a soft-focus pinhole aesthetic.
Monochrome pinhole photograph of stone alpine buildings on a grassy slope beneath a rocky cliff, with a soft-focus border.
Monochrome, soft-focus wide-angle shot of hikers walking on a mountain trail below the sharp peaks of Saxer Lücke.
Monochrome pinhole photograph showing people walking on a mountain path between rocky slopes under a cloudy sky.
Monochrome pinhole photograph of a mountain hiking signpost with directional arrows and destination names against a rocky slope.
A black and white photograph captures a group of hikers walking away on a winding dirt trail toward a large mountain lodge under a cloudy sky.
Monochrome, soft-focus wide-angle photograph of hikers resting on a grassy mountain slope beside a lake surrounded by jagged peaks at Saxer Lücke.
Monochrome pinhole landscape photograph showing a mountain lake nestled between steep rocky peaks, framed by pine trees in the foreground.
A black and white, soft-focus landscape view framed through a natural tree hollow, showing jagged mountain peaks reflecting on a lake.

Behind the camera

Dávid Hosszú

Monochrome studio portrait of a man with a beard and hair tied in a bun, looking downward against a plain background.

I approach long-term projects as open studies of identity, place, and human experience. I’m curious about the patterns we share and the details that make us unique, the way expressions, posture, environment, and movement can tell parts of our stories.

My work combines observation, technical experimentation, and a genuine interest in the people and contexts I photograph. Whether I’m working with portraits or with the surrounding world, I try to create images that are both aesthetically refined and connected to simple questions with complex answers: Where do we come from? How do we shape each other? And what traces do we leave behind?

Read more about David

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