Gabriel Biderman
Bowl for health (haunted I) -- by Joe Reifer
I first met Gabriel Biderman in the early 90's, when a mutual friend of ours and I took a whirlwind road trip from New Hampshire up to Maine in a rusted out Honda CVCC. Gabe later moved to San Francisco where we hung out a few times, including a couple of photo shoots and darkroom visits. He's also one of the few photographers I've asked to photograph me, and the portraits turned out great.
Gabe was my first introduction to both pinhole photography, and The Nocturnes night photography website. Gabe has some work featured in The Nocturnes online exhibit from 2000. Gabe has been shooting with pinhole cameras for a long time, and has produced some stunning work. The Pictura Pixel website features a portfolio of Gabe's pinhole images, along with an interview.
Gabe moved to New York in 2000, and works in the marketing department at B&H Photo. There's a good interview on Double Exposure about how Gabe balances his work life and still finds time to be a creative photographer.
Gabe is one of those people who has an infectious good energy. He's always up for an adventure. He was in San Francisco this week for Mac World, and we met up last night on Treasure Island for some night photography. During a break between shots, he put on the sheet for the ghost image in front of an abandoned bowling alley above.
Even though he has access to the latest and greatest gear at B&H, Gabe was mostly shooting with an old Mamiya C220 last night. He also showed me an extremely cool Zero Image 6x12 combination pinhole and zone plate camera. I own the 6x9 version of this camera, which I reviewed last month. The 6x12 version has a switch that allows you to select either an f/158 pinhole, or an f/55 zone plate. Gabe has made long exposure images where he uses the pinhole for part of the exposure, and then switches to the zone plate mid-shot.
Gabe has a website called ruinism.com, which is undergoing a redesign over the next few weeks. I'll be looking out for more great images from Gabe on his new site.