The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 159

What "Oracular Orifices: An International Survey of Contemporary Pinhole Photography." i 'I Marcus Kaiser used the Berlin Wall as his pinhole camera by taping black masks to the wall and punching tiny holes to catch the Images. PEEPM TIOUGH PINM When 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, through March 16. Where Art Gallery, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Whereabouts Take Fairview Road exit from San Diego Freeway and drive south.

The college will be on your right; most convenient parking entrance is off MerrimacWay. Wherewithal Admission is free. Where to call (714)432-5039. abstract artists. 13) 857-6000.

LOS ANGELES TIMES hole and the distance between the hole and the film.) The show, curatcd by photographer Peggy Jones, includes photographs as well as pinhole cameras made out of such things as a chocolate drink powder box, a box of detergent and a metal pretzel can. The weirdest camera on view is Thomas Bachler's mouth in which he held pieces of film to produce vague, light-filled self-portraits. Darryl Curran's entire piece is a camera built into the gallery walls that records student life on the pathway outside as vague black or white shapes. This imprecision deliberately emphasizes "the mystery of photography," as Curran writes in an accompanying statement The prints In the exhibit tend to have a slippery, off-balance look. Just what is going on In these Please see PINHOLE, Page 5 By CATHY CURTIS Return with us now to the thrilling days of low-tech, when a kid could become a photographer simply by asking Mom for an empty oatmeal box.

Nowadays, a surprising number of artists in the United States and abroad have taken to the strange and simple world of pinhole photography, subject of a sweetly offbeat show at Orange Coast College Art Gallery. A pinhole camera consists of nothing more than an enclosed space with a small hole (generally made with a pin) and photographic paper to record the image. As Orange Coast photography instructor John Upton writes In a wall text, pinhole photography is "not a record of a decisive moment but a layering of many moments." The "8lo-mo" effect of lengthy exposures that capture movements Crude Cameras and Their Strange, Charming Images On View at OCC over a period of time account for much of the charm of the pinhole process. So does the sense that the world Is somehow flattening out and letting people spill over the -i IN NEWPORT Edward the subject March 17) chocolate box Is camera. edge.

(Pinhole cameras don't allow the photographer to focus on a specific portion of the view. The relative clarity of the image depends on the diameter of the pin RE ART BEACH: HOPPER Hopper, painter of lonely people and silent spaces, Is of a Newport Harbor Art Museum show (through with works In several media spanning his long IN LOS ANGELES: 'DEGENERATE' ART Based on the "Entartete Kunst" exhibit organized by the Nazis to "prove" the shamefulness of modem art, music, literature and film, "Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Nazi Germany." at the LA. County Museum Includes IN LAGUNA BEACH: KITSCH Thrift store paintings by amateurs and wretched commercial art are the gris'tof sprfghtly new wortffl by Tony Lebat at the Laguna Art Museum through March 17. The San Francisco artist stitches tdsathar his finds to make new compositions the art comes trom uie wmtney Museum pr Amen- York. nWi 39--t'il22.

jiiiMi dnd ORANGE COUNTY, LIVE! 4 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, IV9I.