My friend Ernie be queathed me a brand-new, unused Holga LOMO camera in its unopened box.
“Why are you giving me this when you just bought it?” I ungraciously asked.
“Well, you just lost a camera,” he pointed out.
It wasn’t actually my camera, but the demo unit Kodak Easy Share digital camera I wrote about a few weeks ago. I put the Kodak in a pouch in my bag, and it vanished without a trace. I last saw it in a restaurant: I used it to take pictures of Ernie and Big Bird, then I put it back in my backpack and never saw it again. It can’t have fallen out of my backpack because I’m paranoid about losing stuff — I always look at the seat and floor of the taxi as I get out, to make sure I didn’t forget anything.
Big Bird called the restaurant, and the staff didn’t find it. Either the camera was stolen, or there is a wormhole in my backpack and the Kodak is now taking pictures in another dimension. In the very distant event that the pouch fell out of my backpack, I had an old ID in it with my contact information. Whoever found the camera would know where to return it. If he or she felt like returning it. In any case the nice distributor told me to forget about it. Losing stuff bothers me, so I put a hex on whoever took the camera with the knowledge that it belonged to someone else. Each time they take a picture with it, they will lose something of their own. And I’m being kind, because I could’ve wished that with each snap, they would lose a part of their anatomy.
Back to the Holga camera.
“But I have another camera, and you want this camera,” I told Ernie.
“I have another LOMO camera,” he reminded me.
“Then why’d you buy this one?” I went on.
“I couldn’t help it!” he cried. “He had a signal jammer that disrupted all neural traffic in my brain!”
This is what happened. Ernie was back at the store where he’d bought the first camera, casually looking at the displays, when the same highly attractive salesperson who’d sold him the first camera walked up to him and started giving him the sales pitch. Before Ernie knew what was happening, he had handed over his credit card and acquired a second LOMO camera he hadn’t intended to buy.
“I understand completely,” said The Count. “I have jeans from that store that I’ve never worn. He asked me if they fit, and suddenly I’m handing over my plastic. The jeans are just sitting in my apartment, still in their paper bag.”
“Take the camera!” Ernie said. “Take it!”
Under the circumstances I could hardly refuse. I tore open the package and took out the Holga. It is a chunky plastic camera in bright blue, yellow and pink. I could feel a rash beginning to spread over my arms.
“It’s so cute!” Ernie said.
Yes, it is, hence my rash. I have a low tolerance for cuteness. True, I love cats and cats are inherently cute, but this is an evolutionary mechanism. They make up for it by being snooty and imperious. But this... this LOMO camera had been designed for maximum cuteness.
“Look at the colors!” Ernie enthused.
“Uh... yeah,” I said. The starter kit contained a book of lomographic photos, an instruction manual, and a box containing two AA batteries, a roll of 120 film, and a roll of electrical tape. Apparently the electrical tape was for securing the batteries in their compartment and covering the seams. How quaint. I perused the instruction manual, which struck me as unnecessarily complicated. In my experience, needless complication is often a ploy to assure consumers that they are getting their money’s worth. For a plastic camera, the Holga is very expensive.
The original LOMO cameras were 35mm compacts manufactured in St. Petersburg, Russia in the early 1980s. As we all know, capitalism won, and this communist artifact is now the core of a profitable business based in Austria. The selling points of the LOMO camera are its “individuality” and “spontaneity.” “Don’t think, just shoot!” declares the packaging. We are told that anyone can use it, although you wouldn’t guess it from reading the strangely oblique starter literature.
According to the manual, one of the most beloved features of the Holga is its multiple exposures — you can take as many exposures as you like on a single frame. It has a color flash wheel so you can take photos with a red, blue, yellow, or regular flash. Holgas have varying degrees of light leaks, so the photos are overexposed. To some photographers, this means “bad pictures”; to LOMO users it is the “special signature look.”
After reading the starter materials I really needed to listen to some Black Sabbath. Still, one must keep an open mind and try new (or new-ish) things. So I took the Holga to my Sunday coffee with the camera fiends, Bernard-Henri and Michel.
“I have a LOMO camera,” I announced.
They pointed at me and laughed. They laughed for a long time. Loudly.
“Did you know that there’s an iPhone app that can make your photos look like LOMO photos?” Bernard-Henri said, helpfully.
Clearly I would get neither sympathy nor aid from my snobbish friends.
I stashed the Holga in my backpack, where it’s been sitting there unused and apparently wormhole-proof. But someday I will work up the courage to be seen in public employing such cuteness, and I will tell you all about it. For now I have to listen to Black Sabbath.
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