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	Photo: Peter Tonningsen

    Armed with a pedometer and a pinhole camera, award-winning fine art photographer and Alameda native Peter Tonningsen has set out to create a visual historical record of Alameda with his art project Steps. Methodically counting each step as he walks, Tonningsen has wandered the city for more than a year and a half, documenting these walks with pictures. Each image he shoots is titled with a number representing the cumulative number of steps he’s taken up to the moment the photo is shot. “It’s one of my favorite modes of image making, being out on my own; it’s not manufactured. It keeps me in touch with the community and its transformations.”
    Since the project’s inception, he’s taken about 60 outings and walked just over 300,000 steps, shooting more than 700 photographs along the way. Tonningsen, who teaches at the Academy of Art University, estimates he has covered at least 85 percent of the main island but has yet to cover Bay Farm Island. He isn’t shy, by the way, in his quest for his interesting shots, sometimes even wandering into people’s backyards for just the right image.
    In October 2007, the Frank Bette Center exhibited a sampling from the ever-growing collection, and Steps hung at the California Public Utilities Commission Gallery in San Francisco in January. Tonningsen wants to turn the project into a book and foresees a few more years of footwork, saying, “A million steps sounds like a good number.” He’d like to document Alameda from an aquatic perspective by taking the pinhole camera out on the Bay in his kayak. Expanding Steps into Oakland and San Francisco is also a possibility. And what’s to stop him from going global? Perhaps someday we’ll see Peter Tonningsen’s Steps Around the World. Visit the Web site.