Provence Holga:
Provence is the southernmost area of France, an area that is full of history and tradition, with a relaxed pace of life that depends more on agriculture rather than on technology. It is a place where the senses are savored, and art embraces those senses. It's also an area (along with England) that claims honors as the birthplace of photography. And it is a place of dazzling light, intense shadow, and details reminiscent of that past era.
The Holga is a small plastic camera with few controls. The images it produces are defined by a vignette, where a darker, distorted edge surrounds a more clearly defined center. It absolves itself of the purely descriptive nature of photography by embracing a lack of perfection, and it draws our attention into the center of the image, away from the outside edges.
With the Holga, the subtleness of the tones and the unreliability of the results provide me with continuing discoveries: I can guess at what the image will look like, but I’m always surprised when I see the developed negatives. I am drawn to this sense of discovery and uncertainty, and the emotional motifs that are evoked by such imperfect images.
In a way, the Holga image echoes our own imperfect understanding of life: when our attention is focused on some object or idea we may see it clearly but everything else often becomes blurred and vague. Holga images are not perfect reflections of the world. They retain some mystery, some aura of the unexpected.
It is the same when traveling. I may acquaint myself with the history and culture of an area before I arrive, but it is the sense of discovery and uncertainty, the texture of a place, and the emotional experience of actually being there that inspires my image-making. I tend to immerse myself in the moment, and let the outside world slip away, and that is the image I seek.
“Provence Holga” represents the experience of traveling in the south of France, of just being there, in the moment. And it is a look back at a simpler time, with a simpler view; an ode to a time when discovery still outweighed technology.
