Thirty years ago my dad acquired a Rolleiflex 2.8F which had been part of a large government scientific project, but because it had been bought with external funds, his division didn’t want it after the project ended, so he got to keep it. After using it to make the above image at East Rennell, Solomon …
Rolleiflex 2.8F – Reflections on a Brief Period of Ownership – by Simon Foale Read More
I remember covering the Black Lives Matter protests in the US a few years ago–before I made the switch to analog full time–vividly: the police sirens, blocked streets, chanting, and all the run-and-gunning as one often does in high-action situations. Like I mentioned in my previous article, there is something about chaos that I gravitate towards. I enjoy the adrenaline rush, uncertainty, and the precarious nature of photographing in situations that are potentially hazardous. Whether it’s an underground metal concert in a pitch-black club filled with hundreds of people or a demonstration where thousands are calling for change. Witnessing the raw emotion, anger, frustration, and the release that follows is what excites me the most. Conflict in any shape or form is a worthy theme to capture and analyse.
Like many a photographer, I’ve accumulated a couple of drawers worth of cameras and lenses. In my case, reflecting the fact that I’ve owned a camera since 1963, when I was given a Kodak Brownie Fiesta for my 10th birthday, nearly all of these “excess” cameras are the kind that use film.
I’ve also sold a number of cameras over the years – a series of auto-focus Nikon film bodies when I finally went digital (F100, N80, N65, and then eventually bought a cherry F100 in Tokyo, and a low mileage N90s to use a camera bag full of sweet Nikkor glass); a lovely Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta; an even more desirable Contax G2 with its holy trinity of Zeiss lenses; to name a few.
But I’ve always said the camera I’ll never sell is my Rolleiflex 2.8F
Is a photograph any good if it needs an introduction? Shouldn´t art speak to you without accompanying words? Shouldn’t a great picture captivate your imagination and inspire thought and free association without the author telling you what to think and associate?
I have this idea in my head that a picture should wow the viewer. Like what Cartier-Bresson made. My own “work” if I may call my hobby work at all, falls way short of that grand idea. That is why I hesitate to show my pictures to anyone. Are they any good if I need to tell people why I made them in the first place? And, more importantly, do I have anything to say that would be remotely interesting to anyone?
Any psychotherapist or their client will probably agree that it is a challenge to unlearn habits reinforced over a couple of decades. I was lucky to be bought a completely manual 35mm viewfinder camera when I was probably 11 years old, in the 1980s – a Voigtlander Vito B (that I still have and have started to use again) which I learned to use way back then, along with basic black-and-white developing and printing.
