Final College Photography Project.
These past 5 weeks was sort of a nightmare as I prepared for my very last photography project as an undergraduate. The anxiousness of not knowing what to expect killed me during this entire process. Because of the nature of the plastic Holga camera, it is often very difficult to predict what your photos might look like. You see, I have quite an obsession with needing to control the cameras I work with. Not being able to predict or control the things I am working with gets me nervous. I had originally planned to use a ton of lighting equipment for this project, but on the day of the shoot, nothing (I REPEAT, NOTHING) was working properly with the Holga— a ton of the plexiglass models that I built broke apart and nothing was going the way I had planned. However, at the end of the day, I was quite surprised by the trippy colors and strange light leaks from the camera. I have learned to embrace this little plastic camera and love it for it’s imperfections. It was the imperfections in these photos that made everything perfect in it’s own way.
My final college project is about a future generation that strives for technological advancement using digital information that is completely surrounded around the head. The people are all encased in a plexiglass that is filled with technological information. The plexiglass surrounds them, protects them and molds the people into who they are. The land of the plexitross is a place where everyone is encouraged to strive for perfection, it is a place where the people are protected as long as they wear the plexiglass on their heads at all times. My project documents the lives of several people who try to escape away from this futuristic land and enter into the woods where they try to find peace. As the plexitross people enter into the woods, they discover that they are afraid of letting go of the plexiglass because they have become so reliant upon it. The plexitross people walk around the woods with fear and sadness as they realize that they are blinded by the reflections of themselves–preventing them from being able to see the beauty in the nature around them. The plexitross people realize that it is impossible to return to the past where they were once free and liberated from technology.
HOLGA 120 camera
Films used:
FujiColor PRO400
Kodak Portra400
Kodak Ektar 100
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