A Scotsman, James Finlayson, founded the Finlayson Cotton Mill in 1820 into the center of my hometown Tampere, Finland. Just two years later, a Frenchman Jacques Louis Mande Daquerre created a means to store permanent photographic images, and an English scientist, Sir David Brewster, took the first pinhole pictures in 1850.

I photographed the chimney of this cotton mill using a French-built Lerouge 45 pinhole camera. I find it interesting that all these elements, invented within a few decades in the 1800s come together in this picture. The pinhole camera draws a soft and almost dreamlike view to the foregone era. In these modern times, when new technologies emerge daily, it is refreshing to use something that has barely changed in almost 200 years.