Friday, September 21, 2007

Catching ghosts

When I was about 7 years old, I remember my teacher sending me to the classroom store cupboard to get some books. As I drew the door closed behind me, I noticed in the muffled and dust-furred corner a vision the equal of any marian apparition. There, playing across the spines of the books before me, was a perfect, full-motion recreation of the classroom outside, extruded through the keyhole into the blackness.

I ran to tell my teacher, Mr Featherstone-Haugh, who explained the principles of the Camera Obscura to me. I didn't care about physics though. I had discovered a parallel, inverted world, running alongside the real world. It seemed as if I was watching the spirits of my school friends, removed and unaware of their real-world brothers quietly writing in the next room.

I think this is what using the Holga - a notoriously flimsy, medium-format camera - reminds me of. It has limited exposure control, it leaks light all over your film and its plastic lens is little better than a pinhole camera - it's about as far away from serious photography as you can get.

What it does do though is take me back to that cupboard, surrounded by the ghosts of the living world. Those luminous figures are finally captured, caught in the little room inside my camera.



Holga Image by Mark Wheeler

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