My fickle, finicky toy camera and I have a real hot-and-cold relationship.
Sometimes I love my Holga and the dreamy half-blurred images that come from its plastic shell. Other times, its instability and inconsistency drive me away. In 2016, a year marked by both political and emotional turmoil and a constant feeling of lacking control, I only took five pictures with the Holga—three of them in India, when the year and my heartache were almost over. I used the camera a bit more in 2017—mostly in Tunisia, which I wrote about here—but put it down after early summer.
This year, though, I’ve been using the Holga quite a bit more, and remembering all the surreal transcendent qualities of the images it produces. I took the camera along in April when Pesha and I went to frolic among the tulips in Goztepe Park, and was blown away by some of the fabulous images from that roll.
When I was in New York in July, my constant collaborator Alison gifted me a pile of expired medium format film. The Holga is the main medium format camera I use, so I’ve taken it as an excuse to shoot with it much more frequently. And while every 12-image roll has duds—honestly, with the Holga, it sort of comes with the territory—some of the pictures that work have been so special. That just makes me want to shoot even more.
I’ve spent a lot of time this year playing around with double exposures and really leaning into the dream-like, unreal aesthetic that I’ve flirted with for a while. The Holga, when it works, REALLY works. I want to make more magic; I think, for now, I’ll stick with the toy and see what we can make.
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