At a time when humanity is moving way too fast, photographer Heather Palecek’s favorite creative method embraces the opposite, utilizing the slow passage of time, capturing the sun as it crosses the sky.
She creates images using handmade pinhole cameras, a technique that goes back to the very beginnings of photography. The exposures take weeks, months, sometimes even a year or more, and the results are enchanting and somewhat surreal.
“(I’m attracted to) pinhole photography because it’s slow, immersive, experimental, and doesn’t require you to carry around a bag full of heavy lenses and equipment,” Palecek says. “Once I got started I never stopped.”
“My solargraphs are out for multiple months, even years,” says Palecek, who grew up in Sussex County and currently lives in Ewing. “I use an old tin (container), like an Altoids box, something small and metal, and I drill a hole into it, and add a little aluminum lens to the front. I have hundreds of them out, all over the world, in all the local parks, sometimes on bridges.”
Palecek even installs her pinhole cameras when traveling, which gives her the perfect excuse for returning to the locale to retrieve the devices.
“Right now, I have one in Madrid, which I accidentally forgot, so I have to travel back there. Sometimes my friends can (collect) them and send them back to me,” she says. “Even if I’m just staying a weekend, I do normally leave them at the place I’m visiting. I call it ‘solar journaling,’ to capture the sun in the sky through my vacation as a memory.”
A handful of her solargraphs are on view through Monday, January 9, 2023, in the exhibit titled “Capital Connections,” at the Gallery at Mercer County Community College in West Windsor. (Opening reception, Wednesday, November 9.)
In addition to her involvement with the exhibit, Palecek — and Trenton-based photographer Habiyb Shu’Aib — curate and moderate Twosday Talks, a monthly artist talk at the JKC Gallery, on the James Kerney Campus of MCCC in Trenton. Hosted by Michael Chovan-Dalton, director of the JKC Gallery, the talks were started by Palecek and Shu’Aib as a platform for local artists to showcase their work to the Trenton and larger regional community. The event quickly reached an audience from New York to Philadelphia, other states around the U.S., and even abroad. Twosday Talks are both in-person and virtual, and the next event is Tuesday, November 8, with guests Jackie Neale and Melvin Evans.
“The first one, in February 2020, was phenomenal, 30 people came,” Palecek says. “But then, in March 2020, the pandemic cancelled everything. By September 2020, we accustomed ourselves to Zoom, and relaunched the event. This way we could get artists from all over the country and world.”
The talks have maintained their global audience, with a regular participant from Finland checking in, as well as participants from France and Switzerland.
As for the guests, Palecek and Shu’Aib try to present two artists who are very different from one another in style and subject matter, for example one digital and one analog, or a documentarian and a more conceptual or fine art photographer.
As if creating, exhibiting, and moderating the Twosday Talks isn’t enough activity, Palecek is in business as a portrait and “small event” photographer, and she has a full time job as a photography teacher at Montgomery High School in Skillman.
“Yep, I’m busy,” she says.
Palecek cherishes working with high school-age students, and in fact, at age 16, decided she wanted to pursue this very career.
“In high school, I took my first photography class and it changed my life forever,” she writes via e-mail. “I was always very interested in science and math as well as the arts. When I started learning about SLR cameras in class and developing my film and prints in the darkroom, I absolutely fell in love with the subject because it combined my love of art, math, and science in a deep way.”
“I decided during that year of school (at age 16) that I was going to pursue photography forever and that when I ‘grew up’ I wanted to be a high school photography teacher,” Palecek writes.
In an age where every teenager has a smartphone with the ability to instantly create images digitally, Palecek carefully instructs her charges in film photography and darkroom technology.
“The darkroom is something they’ve never seen before, and I really love giving them that experience,” she says. “They keep me inspired, and keep me enthused.”
“They’re 16 and 17-year-olds and their entire life has been digital, but for the first time, they’re making something with their hands, understanding how the camera works,” she adds. “They have to think more to make sure the images come out right — it’s not just pressing a button.”
The experience of seeing an image arise from the chemical bath and come into focus is an “aha moment” for the students — there’s just something mysterious about it.
“I tell my students, there isn’t a professional photographer who doesn’t remember the first time they saw their image come up in the darkroom,” Palecek says.
Perhaps because of her childhood in the mountains of Sussex County, Palecek has a strong connection to nature, and this passion is revealed in her work.
“Since I was a child, I’ve always felt a strong spiritual connection with Mother Nature, so that just naturally flows into my artwork as I create,” she says. “Most of my artwork is about humans’ relationship to Mother Nature, and I explore that theme in a variety of ways with a multitude of mediums. I’ve made artwork about my kinship with trees and another project about my spiritual connection to Mother Nature during difficult or chaotic times.”
“I have bodies of work about human contribution to climate change, using both compost and single use plastics for the different works,” Palecek says. “I’ve experimented with ways in which I can collaborate with Mother Nature to create my artwork instead of solely making artwork about Her.”
For example, this summer she was working on a pinhole photography project in which she used foraged items to create her apertures, such as caterpillar bitten leaves. “Sticky and Stained,” an image exhibited at a recent show in Vermont (titled “Squash ‘Em!”), used spotted lantern flies as subject matter, “to create lumen prints and unique silver gelatin prints that inform viewers about the destruction that they cause in our forests and explain what we as a community can do to stop the spread of the insect,” she says.
Palecek’s father was a general contractor and home builder, and a skilled woodworker. Young Heather also pursued woodworking and for many years used her father’s scroll saw to make figurines, which she would later paint with the art supplies she bought at her mother’s family’s Ben Franklin Five and Dime store.
“That’s where I purchased many of my craft projects and got interested in a variety of mediums,” she says.
She graduated from Montclair State University in 2008, where she earned a degree in fine arts education with a concentration in photography. Palecek’s significant other is Joshua David Dukeman, a talented woodworker and owner of Exile Woodworking, specializing in furniture design and building.
Aside from the images on view at MCCC, Palecek has four photographs on exhibit at the Halide Project in Philadelphia, as part of the Lux et Libera show, and you can see about a dozen of her cyanotypes on the walls at Well Design in Mendham.
She’ll also be curating an exhibit at the Trenton City Museum in December, featuring sustainable artists who upcycled materials as their medium, tools, substrate, or frame.
Palecek can’t really nail down any artistic or photographic influences, partly because she’s never seen anyone do the kind of work she’s doing.
“I draw my inspiration from personal experience,” she says. “Of course there’s a real connection with nature, inspiration from just exploring the natural world, but I’m also inspired to keep pushing forward and experimenting from a community of artists both in Trenton and online.”
“I gather new concepts from experimenting with new processes,” she continues. “I’m always in the darkroom, finding new ways to do things — I approach it as a science. There are so many processes I’m interested in.”
Pinhole photography is at the very heart of Palecek’s creative life, and the slow, meditative process even informs her way of being. She came to it after years of doing only digital photography, and had realized she felt like something was missing.
“I was craving the tactile, hands-on approach to image-making that can be found in the analog photography process I grew up with,” she says. “As I continued to pursue the medium, I discovered that I liked photographing with my tin can cameras more than any other camera because of the aesthetic quality of the images and the fact that when I’m photographing with a pinhole camera, the camera is not in front of my face as a barrier between myself and my surroundings.”
“This approach became a lifestyle choice as I began to learn to meditate and slow down in my personal life,” Palecek says. “I love being able to be more present during my long exposures and experience what’s happening in front of me at the same time as my camera sitting next to me.”
Heather Palecek’s works are part of the group show “Capital Connections,” at the Gallery at Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road, West Windsor, through Monday, January 9, 2023. Opening reception, Wednesday, November 9. 609-570-3589. mccc.edu/community_gallery.shtml
Twosday Talks, moderated by Palecek and Habiyb Shu’Aib at the JKC Gallery, on the James Kerney Campus of MCCC, Trenton Hall, 137 North Broad Street, Trenton, continue on Tuesday November 8, 6:30 p.m., with guests Jackie Neale and Melvin Evans. Free. www.mccc.edu/community_gallery_jkc.shtml
More information on Palecek: www.heatherpalecek.com
Photographer Heather Palecek’s 'solargraphs' are on view as part of the 'Capital Connections' exhibit at the Gallery at Mercer County Community College.,
'Riverview Cemetary' by Heather Palecek.,
