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January 03, 2009 Regional Arts Commission |
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Holga Polka
Holga Polka
Friday January 9, 2009
The Regional Arts Commission
Saint Louis, Missouri
In this age of digital photography, forty-two local artists have taken the Holga challenge. Forget about using expensive, technology-laden cameras. The Holga, categorized as a toy camera because it is made of plastic, doesn’t have any bells and whistles. Yet, the Holga has a loyal following dedicated to its signature style of shocking simplicity and unpredictable results.
“The Holga only has one f-stop,” explained Mark A. Fisher, photographer and curator of the Holga Polka Invitational. “The back of the camera might fall off if you don’t tape it on. You’ll get double exposures, either intentionally or unintentionally, if you don’t advance the film. Little about the Holga says it’s a camera, but people are still using it as another tool for creating stunning work.”
To celebrate creative Holga photography in a contemporary assortment of media types and styles, the Regional Arts Commission (RAC), located at 6128 Delmar, will host the Holga Polka Invitational from January 9, 2009 – February 22, 2009. Each of the forty-two participating artists were encouraged to experiment with alternate approaches to their own primary medium to create a variety of art – ceramics, hand made books, alternative photographic processes, printmaking, mixed media, and if all else fails, traditional photographs - based on their own Holga images. The opening reception on January 9th from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. will feature a live polka band to help set the quirky atmosphere.
A handful of writers from local publications have also been invited to try their luck with the mysterious Holga. Stefene Russell of St. Louis Magazine, Alison Sieloff of the Riverfront Times, and Byron Kerman of Playback St. Louis will each take photos with a Holga for two weeks. Their results will be displayed at the Holga Polka Invitational and their experiment chronicled in their respective publications.
Holga Polka Invitational participant Tony Schanuel has been a photographer since the 1970s, but he didn’t begin using the Holga until Fisher gave him one in 2006.
“I hadn’t shot film in some time,” recalled Schanuel. “I’d been using digital cameras. I have some very expensive film cameras that have been sitting on the shelf for the past seven years, and then Mark gives me this twenty-dollar plastic camera that has the lens quality of a cataract. It’s very limited in what it can do. You don’t have an incredible amount of control. Consequently, it’s a risky camera to work with.”
Despite the Holga’s flaws, or maybe because of them, Schanuel couldn’t put down his Holga. The Holga is known for producing soft-focus images, leaking light spontaneously into pictures, and casting a hazy vignette around the image without a definitive foreground or background. “It’s a strange camera and in my case it was kind of like an odd magnet,” said Schanuel, who described the camera as “fun” and “wacky.”
Schanuel said the Holga encouraged him to go back to his roots as a photographer. He found liberation in the lack of control and began to rethink subject matter. “The Holga is the perfect camera for quirky subject matter like six-foot lawn bunnies,” said Schanuel.
The possibilities are endless for the results of the 2009 Holga Polka Invitational. Since the Holga’s birth as a kitschy, mass-produced camera in Hong Kong in the 1980s, the Holga has become an additional tool for many amateur as well as professional photographers world-wide, producing wide-ranging imagery from whimsical student work to award-winning photographs. Photographer David Burnett won a top prize at the 2001 White House News Photographers’ Association’s Eyes of History contest for a photo he took with a Holga of Al Gore on the campaign trail in 2000.
Still, the Holga remains stubbornly itself. “It’s a Holga— you’re always going to have problems,” Fisher said. “If there’s nothing falling off, it’s not a Holga. They are marvelous instruments for the pure purpose of ‘seeing’. All technology is relegated to how well you apply your electrical tape and whether you remember to manually advance the film. The essence of the photographic process is distilled, producing fascinating images when placed in the hands of talented and creative artists.”
Regional Arts Commission © January 2009
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