Camera Out of Nothing

Born in 1953 in Richmond, Virginia, Edward Levinson has lived in Japan since 1979, where he works as a fine art photographer and essay writer. He studied photography at Virginia Commonwealth University and took a pinhole workshop with Eric Renner and Nancy Spencer in Santa Fe. He is among the most recognised contemporary masters of the camera obscura. His photobook Timescapes Japan won first prize at PX3 (Prix de la Photographie Paris) in 2007, and his short pinhole film Tokyo Story (2014) was selected for a number of international film festivals. He has held solo exhibitions at Olympus Gallery in Tokyo and Osaka. His work is held in the collections of the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology (Kraków), the Hungarian Museum of Photography (Kecskemét), and private collections worldwide. Alongside photography, he writes essays and haiku.

Jeff McConnell holds an MFA in Photography from the Tyler School of Art. For more than twenty years he has worked exclusively with self-made pinhole cameras. He lives in the open, green countryside of New Jersey, not far from New York. His practice ranges from street photography made with a handmade camera over half a metre long to solargraphs — ultra-long exposures that record the sun's movement across the sky over days and months. His work has been exhibited in the United States, Poland, Russia and Belarus, and he is a regular presence in the international pinhole community.

Born in 1964 in Zurich, Stefan Killen has photographed the New York metropolitan area with pinhole cameras since moving there in 1991 — more than thirty years of sustained work in a single city. He studied drawing and painting at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He works with handmade cameras on 120-format film, built on the model of the Swiss photographer and educator Peter Olpe. He has exhibited at the Alan Klotz Gallery and Soho Photo Gallery in New York, including in shows juried by Larry Gagosian, Brian Paul Clamp and Eric Renner. His photographs appear in the award-winning book Out of Focus: Pinhole Cameras and Pinhole Photographs (Niggli, 2012) and in the magazines Blur and Pinhole Journal, as well as United Airlines' in-flight magazine Hemispheres. A long-running project is devoted to Walt Whitman's poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. His prints are in private collections across the United States, Europe and Japan. He lives in Brooklyn, where he also runs the graphic design studio Red+Company.

Born in 1990 on the Caspian coast in Baku, Emin Mathers trained as an architect and came to photography as a way of holding on to what architecture cannot contain — the texture of daily life and the drift of the city. He now works in Berlin as a conceptual photographer, combining documentary observation with experimental printing processes and monotype. He has exhibited at YARAT Contemporary Art Space and the Baku Photography House, taken part in the KOLGA Tbilisi Photo Festival, and been published on the Chai Khana platform. He was a finalist at the London Street Photography Festival 2020 and a participant in the UN75 Global Conversation exhibition. He co-founded the Baku photographers' union f3.7. Works from his project NØVA III are included in the Lunar Codex archival mission, scheduled to be delivered to the Moon in 2026.

A photographer and educator, and the founder of Baku Center of Photography, he trained first as a mathematician — which partly explains his attraction to processes where precision sits beside chance. He studied at the Rodchenko Art School in Moscow, the Free Workshops of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, and the Salzburg Summer Academy. For several years he taught darkroom and cyanotype classes at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow and ran his own studio with a darkroom. A few years ago he moved to Baku, where there was no accessible darkroom, so he built one himself: first for his own use, then as a shared space. He founded BCOP in 2025.

Aghaali Sadirli (b. 2001 in Azerbaijan) is a filmmaker, photographer and visual artist. He began his artistic journey through documentary photography with YARAT's Yay School programme and took part in YARAT's group exhibition in 2015. While studying Chemistry and Biology at Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University, he continued developing documentary photography and filmmaking projects. His works include The Soviet Union Has Collapsed, Grandma!, Sadarak, Student House, Bakirin Ölüm Rəqsi, Oil, Beauty Demands Sacrifice! and Call of Kaifu. In 2023 he collaborated with Caucasus Edition on A Small Journey into the Past, exploring Azerbaijan's political history, and presented a kitsch-themed exhibition with YARAT. He is also the director and screenwriter of the documentary Memories Untold, a collaborative project with Armenian creators that was screened in Germany. In 2024 his documentary Call of Kaifu received the Best Local Documentary Film award at the Dokubaku International Documentary Film Festival.

Khadija Abdullayeva (2006) is an Azerbaijani student based in Baku, currently studying Economics while maintaining a strong interest in creative expression. She is drawn to observing everyday moments and translating them into visual forms through sketches and small-scale works. Her perspective moves between a quiet, observant nature and a curiosity about the world around her, often drawn to subtle details, atmosphere and fleeting emotions. As she continues to shape her artistic direction, her work is gradually developing into an exploration of visual storytelling, reflecting on how attention and perception influence the way we experience moments.

Okay Özkan (b. 1987, Ankara) completed his undergraduate degree in Visual Arts at Marmara University and his MFA in Art and Design at Yıldız Teknik University. The artist, who also studied for a semester at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, lives and works in Baku. Özkan uses photography, performance, found objects, video and digital images in his works. He is interested in the networks of relationships between ordinary situations, objects and items in daily life, focusing on the layers formed by these relationship networks. Özkan has participated in numerous exhibitions including 'Context' at Salaam Cinema in Baku (2024); 'SeaLand' at Bodrum Maritime Museum in Muğla (2024); 'Conatus' at Akbank Sanat in İstanbul (2023); 'Background Acoustic' at Mekan Blogspot in Balıkesir (2021); 'State of Normality' at Structura Gallery in Sofia (2020); 'The Stones' at Bilsart in İstanbul (2019); 'Still Life with A Curtain' at Galerist in İstanbul (2018); 'Sessions I' at Mixer (2016); 'Skinny Deeping in the Void' at Noordwall in Den Haag (2014).

Shahla Abbakirova (1989) was born and raised in Baku, Azerbaijan, and has a background in international relations. Always fascinated by art and photography, she sees photography as a way to stay connected to life beyond the office. Her photographs, often accompanied by poetry, explore social dilemmas and are infused with whimsical imagery and symbolism. Shahla has exhibited her work at the 'Women in Photography' exhibition organised by VarYox and has been published on the Chai Khana platform.

Teymur Huseynov (born in 1998, Baku, Azerbaijan) is an emerging photographer working with mobile and pinhole photography. He holds a higher education degree in Civil Engineering and lives and works in Baku. His practice explores urban environments, architecture, nature, and themes of memory and nostalgia. In 2026 he took part in the pinhole photography workshop at Baku Center of Photography, where he began exploring alternative photographic processes.

Born in 2006, Teymur Nuriyev is an Azerbaijani student with a keen interest in exploring various forms of artistic expression, particularly music and photography, which are two inseparable parts of his life. In any of his works and expressions, he pursues the theme of finding romanticism and sentimentality in everyday moments and striving for the hyper-sensitivity of feelings to everything that surrounds a person.

Born in Russia, Yana has over 15 years of experience working in the field of art and culture, including museums and galleries in Russia and Europe. She graduated from the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Moscow and the Curatorial School in Venice. Her work is now focused on socially engaged community art, art therapy and performance, as well as working with silver as an artist.