Some weeks ago, my friend Heather and I went for a walk together in my neighborhood. We took sixteen pictures on her Holga camera. Later, I asked Heather if she wanted to co-publish a photo essay here and invited her to write something to go along with it. Thanks for reading.
To get some thoughts going - I looked at the pictures to “jog” my memory.
This invitation to share thoughts about the photo walk has had me circling my memory of it. Like I am supposed to accurately describe this walk. I said to Kelsey - “let me think if I have the ability to communicate what I have to say because getting it from the brain to the paper is a real effort for me.” And what I mean is I have to wade through an expectation I have from myself about the way to do this. I have to wade through the swamp in my brain that makes it hard for me to get my thoughts out. The swamp is filled with thoughts about not being a writer and not doing the beautiful spring walk justice and some memory about a creative writing class in high school.
Jog, circling, wade - A workout.
Looking at the pictures seems to activate that part of brain. What part I do not know. I guess it’s the part that I associate with having a photographic memory. It starts to bring up all the other things I saw on that walk that I did not photograph.
I did not photograph all the dogs that we passed. I did not photograph all the moss that I was noticing. I did not photograph the garbage can where Kelsey mentions she got proposed to near. I did not photograph the tree that looked like a butt. I did not photograph the cobblestone of the one side road that I adore. I did not photograph the tree that Kelsey was shocked by because it seemed to have changed since she last saw it. I did not photograph the first set of daffodils I saw but I did photograph the second set. I did not photograph Kelsey as we tried to figure out why her holga camera didn’t work but mine did. I did not photograph the globe in the playground that had some scaling and location issues with its continents. I did not photograph all the shadows I saw. I did not photograph the other collage creations that were at the curb in a pile. I did not photograph the conversation that moved much like the walk - around and up and down and looped back around.
Looks like I accurately described it after all.
— HB
+ 4 more
Me and Heather and our Holgas. Backs off the cameras in our hands, shoulder to shoulder on the couch. Observing the process. I press the shutter on my Holga, the sound like an acorn falling onto the plastic roof of a child’s playhouse. A spring, a black plate, I don’t know exactly what to look for. We swap. Heather hands me her Holga camera and the shutter releases with no bargaining, no resistance. The spring triggers the black plate, which spins to reveal the light through the lens before returning to its former closed position. And I’m sure I say wow because I prescribed my own subjective personal experience with this camera to be a universal reality. My Holga is finicky, works as it should maybe every five attempts, and, I honestly believed, that’s just how it is!! I told myself, reaffirmed by internet forums and blog posts: Holgas are cheap plastic cameras, they are meant to be fussy, unreliable by design. Listen, did the shutter release? Should I advance the film? Or try again?
This malfunctioning medium format camera was doing something for me. It feels luxurious to let my thinking run full tilt towards the fixing, the figuring out, the repair. I could live this way forever, cataloguing distorted frames on 120 film to later interpret.
I forget how you said it, and I hate putting words in your mouth, but I heard something like I think it’s just broken. I laugh at myself. It doesn’t have to be like this.
We weave through Highland Park. Me, Heather, Fala, and Holga. Let’s shoot this roll together, Heather offers, and we pass the camera back and forth, stopping for shadows and flowers. I carefully wind the film after each shot, not once considering that Heather might want to double expose it. I haven’t yet told Heather that I don’t remember which pictures are “mine,” or told her that I’m viewing the collection through the lens of “hers” and “mine.” My favorite shots, the ones I consider “the best,” are “hers”: the reaching red flowers in front of the house on the corner, the daffodils, the one of the collage in my hands alongside my sick desire to preserve this relic in the garbage pile, born from a total stranger in another lifetime.
— KS
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