Photo Walks + the Holga
My husband Chris and I moved to Brooklyn about a month ago. I’m trying to gain some sense of who I am here, so I’ve taken to going on walks with a camera.
On several of these walks, I’ve taken a Holga. A Holga camera is a plastic camera with very rudimentary functions and leaves much of the image-making process up to chance. Here she is:
In all her plastic glory.
The idea of going out on one of these walks looking for an image felt like too much to think about. With everything new, and my brain cranked up to 10, thoughts whirring about, I craved images that would simply make themselves. They would either happen or they wouldn’t.
When the creative process is left up to chance, the only failure is not starting. In that case, I knew I could gift myself accomplishment by simply going out the door with my toy camera…
This video of Francis Bacon being interviewed by British critic and curator, David Sylvester, came into my knowledge after making the Holga images, and he talks about chance in art-making (around 13:00). It’s a great video, and the note on chance is how I feel about going on a photo walk. What camera you choose to bring, which film stock you’re using, and the like are the preliminary “sketch.” The controls that you more or less know will turn out. The rest is chance.
Side note about the video: Look how they move from sitting across from one another in formal interview style to lying on a bed together, lol. So tender!
Also, I thought to include digital contact sheets of the rolls I shot on the Holga to get a sense of how often things don’t work out with this camera… a lot. But, one could argue, things don’t “work” just as frequently when using a more predictable camera. I will say that, because of the Holga's “lossage,” it certainly makes the images that “work” seem more wonderful.
Scroll to the end of the post to see which images I submitted to the West Lab Gallery group show titled, “Pushing the Frame: Willful Transgressions.”
Enjoy!
Roll #1 - 120mm Kodak Ektar 25, Expired (1996)
The contact sheet shows the order in which the images were made.
As you can see, even shooting directly into the sun wasn’t favorable for this film. The only times it was properly exposed were on the two accidental double exposures (imgs _05 + 04)
Roll #2 - 120mm Kentmere Pan 400 (…not expired)
The second roll shot during the same walk… one that I think made the person scanning these slightly happier, given the higher number of good exposures…
A fun side note: the doorman at Russ & Daughters (pictured) was delighted to see a Holga out in the wild. We shared a nice exchange when he opened the door and shouted, “Holga? That’s fun camera!”
My two favorites… submitted to West Lab for their 5 Year Anniversary Group Show:
“Katz’s”
“W-Burg Bridge”
