I Heart Holga
October05200709:00 PM
Holga is the small, cheap, plastic camera I used to shoot my photo page of this year's Central Washington State Fair. She is completely unlike the hefty workhorses we carry for daily work. To start with, she's a toy. Weighing practically nothing, she doesn't even come weighted with the need for advanced photographic knowledge. To make a picture you punch down the shutter button then wind the film by hand. Her back is taped on so that halfway through the roll it doesn't fall off and ruin the entire take. She has no batteries, no light meter, no motor drive. Her shutter speed is set, and approximate. Her lens focuses by moving it back and forth between a picture of one person (close-up) and mountains (far away).
While most of my daily work involves juggling a photograph's content with the technical decisions about lighting, depth-of-field, and speed, the Holga gives me little choice and, paradoxically, ultimate freedom. What I get is what I get. It will likely be technically “flawed,” in exposure or focus. But in return, I get to shed everything from my thoughts except looking for the right subject, the right light, the right moment.
I love the fair, its's so different from anything else. I love walking through the barns and looking at the cows and checking out the largest local zucchini. Although I don't ride many rides, I like to stroll through the midway, watching kids swirl in the swinging chairs or bump into their reflections in the fun house, laughing all the while. Like most folks, I find the smell of a funnel cake, an elephant ear, or the sight of a hand-dipped chocolate ice cream bar irresistible. For me, the fair is an escape, a short trip to another world where it isn't surprising to see Elvis riding a unicycle and juggling for a small group of enthralled viewers, some younger than five, some older than eighty. It's somewhere we can all go, and seems to have a little something for everyone.
The Holga, with all of its flaws, conveys this sense of the otherworldly. The unpredictable images it captures is as unpredictable as the little surprises that make the fair, especially for the young, so exciting.
Lastly, like the fair, working with the Holga seems to ground me in a long tradition. I can imagine people a hundred years ago walking through livestock barns and playing games. And while digital cameras have become my main tool as a photographer, as I pull the film off the developing reel, still wet and smelling of fixer, and hold it up to my kitchen window, I still feel the magic as the ghostly, reversed scenes appear in the film's fine grain.
-- Sara Gettys