Photography / Turkey

The Grand Bazaar on Volvox Film

volvox film

I can’t control myself when it comes to strange film.

Lomography sells all kinds of quirky films and I usually manage to resist. They’re pricey, and I don’t always like film that promises to warp my pictures. The few times I have used weird Lomo film– like my purple wonderland jaunt to Cappadocia— have been magical, but I find that their more bizarre films are better used deliberately.

volvox film

I’m not sure why I impulsively bought their Revolog: Volvox film, why the promise of bright green firefly splotches all over my images sounded appealing. However, once the film was mine, I made a plan– I’d shoot this roll in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, where the dim light promised good results (for this is what the Lomo folks told me: shoot the roll in low light) and where I hadn’t actually visited since the first time my parents were in Istanbul, way back in 2013.

volvox film

volvox film

volvox film

I think these images– of salesmen and minarets, of barbershops and belly dancing costumes, of tea cups and rooftops– are magical in the way Istanbul can be spectacularly and indescribably magical. They don’t reflect the reality I see, they reflect the reality I FEEL. Shooting analog is a way for me to capture the poetry of a place, the wisp of a memory. The pictures remind me of how Istanbul felt when I first visited in 2008 and knew in a rush of spice and smoke and sound that I would be back again and again, that Istanbul had taken hold of some piece of my soul. Sometimes, in the bustle of present life, I forget the giddy lurch I felt on that first trip. Sometimes, I remember.

volvox film

volvox film

volvox film

After wandering through the bazaar all day and chatting with dapper Armenian antique dealers, mustachioed carpet collectors, the last Jewish merchants, and a man who repairs 200-year old stopwatches, we went up to one of the bazaar’s secret rooftops just as the sun slid below the horizon. My pictures from up there are, like the rest of this roll, dappled with unnatural sparkling green light.

volvox film

That’s not how it looked. But that intangible glow, that electric buzz, that wonder, is exactly how it felt.

6 Comments

  • Kerry
    November 15, 2017 at 7:33 PM

    “They don’t reflect the reality I see, they reflect the reality I FEEL.”

    Yesssssss. One of the things I find challenging about photography as an art form is the way that difference can be erased or ignored, with the “documentary” photograph overwriting the personal memory and feeling, even though it doesn’t actually capture what it was like to be there. These may feel a bit gimmicky but I love that they might be a more “real” photograph of an experience…

    Reply
    • Katrinka
      November 20, 2017 at 8:41 AM

      This is exactly why I still shoot analogue 🙂

      Reply
  • Carmel Davis
    November 16, 2017 at 1:02 PM

    Thank you for this beautiful ‘tour’ – mesmerizing indeed. And those green orbs of light somehow seem to belong in the scenes. Magic.

    Reply
  • Jade
    November 21, 2017 at 12:08 PM

    These are beautiful!

    I feel like the green firefly spots are the kind of flickers of excitement and wonder we feel when we recall a really special travel memory that we thought we’d forgotten.

    Reply
    • Katrinka
      November 23, 2017 at 8:38 PM

      Thank you Jade! That’s such a perfect way to put it, I feel exactly that.

      Reply

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