Time was when film was the only option to catalog those fleeting moments and occasions. Then digital crashed into town like some giant Baby Huey - crushing celluloid’s hold on the market and changing the way America kept pace with their memories.
But as digital technology becomes more and more sophisticated, it also becomes harder to grasp.
Forged of cheap plastic with loose seams and flimsy metal side clips, the lens on plastic cameras are no work of German precision. Made of plain clear plastic - they are a no-frills affair.
At around $35, some consider the Holga brand to be the breed’s most popular flavor of the month and the most sought-after to shoot. But there are many more within the genre - from Ricohflex to Brownie - all a matter of taste.
Brand aside, most consider plastic toy cameras counter-intuitive to digital - a return to the simpler days of low-tech when instruction booklets weren’t thick like phone books. Just straightforward equipment immortalizing a creative reality that is a result of honest shooting not exhaustive 250-frame sessions where all but one perfect image is discarded.
Some see toy cameras as just one addition to a well-heeled arsenal of both high and low tech.
The reality is, Holgas are a kind of laughably crude toy. A carnival camera like the ones given away to the first 50 people through the big top in the 1960s. Reminiscent of a cheap comic book gimmick, like sea monkeys.
But while those monkeys were mere brine shrimp, the Holga is exactly what it claims - no less and no more. For those who have learned to embrace its flaws, and use it to creative end, the plastic toy camera is a portal way to a world of magic results - many of which sell in galleries across the world on a regular basis.
Netting that one magic image is precisely the reason interest in low-tech cameras continues to swell.
Steve Krutek is an adjunct professor of photography in the University of Montana arts department. He often introduces students to medium format photography by way of the Holga, because he sees it as a way to help students understand the basics without feeling intimidated by technology.
“Cameras like the Holga, with few mechanisms and moving parts are less about technology and more about letting go and just composing,” said Krutek.
Explaining the split between his students - some critically technical and others clearly techno-phobic - Krutek uses Holgas to more or less level the playing field.
“I think it teaches everyone to work with flaws and the untamable,” he said.
He admits that the looseness of the Holga construction lends qualities of light and effect that you can’t achieve with a controlled, precise camera. Randomness, he said, is what causes the focus to shift from perfection to opportunism.
“I see it more as an artistic movement than something that’s counter to the digital age,” he said. “It is proof that photography doesn’t always have to be this demanding method and technique cycle.”
Holgas are flawed, and that’s the point. They don’t shoot perfect photographs and they aren’t replicable. They leak light, the 120 film rolls they require aren’t easily thread and lead with awkward paper tabs. And the mechanisms to advance the film very often malfunctions.
The good news is the Internet features plenty of Holga sites that offer trial and error remedies for any malfunction, metered by a community of devout Holgans who know exactly how to turn a malfunction into a creative opportunity - or just fix a problem.
Whether taping a viewfinder with duct tape to prevent a light leak, sticking cardboard under the film spool for proper film advance, or popping an internal shutter spring for a longer exposure, you can be sure there is one person in the universe who’s had the same problem with their Holga.
Holga often nets results that even the most experienced digital shooter couldn’t create on film without a little end work in Photoshop.
From vignette-edged subjects, to dramatic shards of light, to forced double exposures and ethereal imagery, the possibilities of both creative intention and mistake are endless.
Named for the Chinese term “ho gwong,” the Holga moniker and camera was born in 1982 in Hong Kong - when photography was an intense national obsession and new camera designs were being churned out daily to feed worldwide demand.
The concept of Holga was simple - forge an inexpensive, bare bones, minimalist camera with only the necessary photo mechanics n three subject settings, a spring-loaded shutter, manual film advance, and the ability to shoot either 12 6-inch-by-6-inch shots or 16 photos in 645 format.
The many unpredictable elements that define Holga might be considered fatal flaws with a regular camera, but for Holga enthusiasts, they are welcome distinctions in which the novice and professional revel.
In the digital age when point and shoot doesn’t cost a dime, and the results resplendent, why should anyone toy with imperfection?
Seattle photographer Michelle Bates, author of “Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity” will give you many good reasons. She’s been shooting professionally for years, and picked up her first Holga in 1991.
Most in the toy camera community to which she belongs consider her the undisputed “Queen of Holga.”
“Someone just yesterday called me the ‘High Priestess of Holganess.’ That was a new one,” she laughed.
As a contract shooter, Bates uses digital outfits to take the stress out of commercial client shoots, but her real passion lies in the relationship she shares with her glut of Holgas, and the opportunities that has provided.
“I teach seminars now all over the country,” she said, explaining that she has no interest in shooting fine art with anything but a Holga.
Fifteen years ago, it was a picture of a roller coaster in her third or fourth roll that hooked Bates, she said, and the reason she kept using them all these years.
“I like the images they produce,” Bates said, adding that she likes to use Holgas for shots not necessarily typical of Holga subject matter.
The best Holga subject matter usually encompasses the whimsical, odd or dramatic - like weird lawn ornaments, dogs leaping for Frisbees or carnival and circus scenes.
But if you’re good, you’re good, and people like Bates know how to make a Holga work after 15 years of shooting.
So does award-winning lens-man David Burnett.
He was on assignment for Newsweek the day he pulled out a toy camera to shoot 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore on the stump during the final week prior to the election. The result was magic.
The black and white photo framed a passionate Gore in white shirt-sleeves against a backdrop of forbidding black clouds looming ever-darker from equipment flaws and photo edge vignettes.
It’s impossible to take your eyes off the image of a larger than life man who appears to be in the eye of the storm. It hangs in the Hemicycle gallery of the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, alongside other “Eyes of History” prize-winning images from fellow White House News Photographers Association contemporaries.
Burnett, a self-confessed Holgaholic, owns four of the imperfect cameras he refers to as magic boxes, and has shot with them for years. But it was only after he started winning awards for that work that top-notch news magazines began calling, asking him to purposely bring it on assignment.
The first was U.S. News and World Report, who asked Burnett to shoot drop spots of accused FBI spy Robert Hanssen.
Holgas can easily be found online on auction sites like eBay, or more directly on the Freestyle Photo Web site - the official licensing body for Holgas in the U.S. Lomographic is another source and bundles their Holgas with a roll of electrical tape for light leaks, and a book that illumines both tips and techniques.
And now Holgas are right in your own backyard. The Dark Room sells the Lomographic Holga kit, and a quirky fisheye camera, which according to clerk Michael Schweizer “makes a very nice gift.”
Maybe even an opportunity to turn toy into magic.
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