Obscura{Analog Photography}

Why use film? How to choose the right one? Finding Surrealism with a $50 camera Picture by Milena Editorial What is inside Milena Atanasova PUBLISHER

EDITORIAL Milena Atanasova EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Gail O’Hara Joanna Han Jerry Saltz CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

ART Milena Atanasova DIRECTOR OF DESIGN Milena Atanasova ART DIRECTOR Joanna Han GRAPHIC DESIGNER James Fitzgerald III CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Where and how to find ANALOG cameras? Why ANALOG and not digital? A GUIDE TO ANALOG PHOTOGRAPHY 2 surreal photos with an old $50 film camera. An Ukranian photographer takes stunning OLEG OPRISCO 5 Who Found Her An Invisible Artist and the Man FINDING VIVIAN MAIER 8 old film lenses for your new DSLR. How to use, choose and adapt 12OLD LENSES

Editor's note

PHOTOGRAPHY is a passion to many. The advance in technology has made it possible to much easier to capture all the moments woth and not worth capturing. However, there are people, who have made the choice to go back to analo, back to the film, back to the real experience of photography. This magazine will encounter you with some of the most famous photographers of our time. In another section, we will show you how others, armed with their film cameras and creativity for their amazing shots, which have the feeling as if those are imaginative computer manipulations. We will try to inspire you to go back a couple of years and rediscover all the advantages of the analog photography...and more. Why do you use film? Tec Petaja I started shooting with film and when I switched A GUIDE TO ANALOG to digital in college I realized I was never going to get the James Fitzgerald look and feel I wanted. After spending hours behind the I love the emotion that film captures and the computer trying to get that “film” look I knew I had to hard-to-reproduce tonal qualities that are created by silver make the transition back to it or I would never be happy reacting to light. There’s also the added benefit of having with what I was producing. When most people see an 70+ years of camera equipment to choose from. PHOTOGRAPHY image that was shot on film they know it looks different and they love it but they don’t know why and most of the time it’s because it was shot on film. The last few years Travis Elborough have been fun building my brand on film and I’ll probably I remain wedded to film by habit, age and never go back to shooting digital. probably stubbornness, really. The rituals of film can be easy to fetishize. Or, perhaps more accurately, I have found them easy to fetishize. The whole fiddly business Geoff Jensen of loading the film into the back of the camera, spooling it HERE AT KINFOLK WE APPRECIATE MANY TIME-TESTED TRADITIONS AND I use film because it has good texture, and on and shooting—and the winder and shutter on my main FILM PHOTOGRAPHY IS ONE OF THEM. WE KNOW A LOT OF OUR because one is required to contemplate and compose a camera, an old Olympus OM1, are so substantial, metallic READERS ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS AND SO ARE MOST OF US portrait or landscape more thoroughly due to the limited and heavy, that you can be forgiven for occasionally AROUND THE OFFICE. WE WANTED TO SHARE SOME amount of shots left in the camera. It is more therapeutic to thinking you are using some ancient Smith & Wesson INSIGHT INTO WHY WE LIKE FILM, WHY WE TRY TO USE me to shoot one or two just right than 17 maybe okay and pistol or something—and then eventually rewinding IT IN THE MAGAZINE AND WHY CERTAIN PEOPLE then not even worry because I can use Photoshop later. the finished roll and getting it out of the camera without WOULDN’T DREAM OF GOING DIGITAL, exposing the thing…all of that…what can I say? It’s just SO WE ASKED SOME OF OUR FAVORITE so pleasingly ceremonial, somehow. Each roll becomes PHOTOGRAPHERS TO WEIGH IN Carissa Gallo practically a rite. I also happen to think that constraints or ON HOW AND WHY THEY I am not exceptionally technologically savvy, limitations, perversely, can be quite creatively liberating. USE FILM AND (MOSTLY) so perhaps it just makes more sense in my mind. I find With film you will only have 24 or 36 shots per roll. I feel, NOT DIGITAL that the outcome I can achieve on film is usually the most perhaps completely erroneously, that this makes you think PHOTOGRAPHY. on par with what I’m hoping for and envisioning. I love a bit more about what you decide to shoot. You don’t want the extra dose of thought that goes into composing and to waste too many frames unnecessarily. But perhaps most capturing an image—especially when you know you are of all, film can be almost willfully mercurial stuff—and paying for each frame! accordingly can add to life’s score of joys and shattering disappointments. Until it’s developed you have no idea whether what you’ve taken is going to come out, let alone Where did you get your be any good. As such it remains mysterious and rather magical stuff. And since a roll can take time to finish and first camera? always takes a certain amount of time to get developed, I Tec Petaja find it a perfect antidote to immediacy expected of almost everything else these days. My parents gave me my first 35 mm film camera in high school for graduation that I still have but don’t shoot. Carissa Gallo I kinda just adopted one from my parents at some point in my childhood. I don’t really remember when. James Fitzgerald The first camera I could call my own was actually a gift from my brother Parker. It was a Canon F-1 and it was Travis Elborough by my side everywhere I went for at least a year. My first ever camera was a hand-me-down—an ancient Kodak Brownie 127—from my mother when I was Geoff Jensen about seven. It looked like an old art deco valve radio, with I got my Canon A-1 from my cousin via our uncle. a slightly curvy black Bakelite body and a cream shutter button. I still have it. It was very basic, just point and shoot and there was no scope for flash or focusing or anything else. The 127 films only gave you 12 exposures but produced Interviews by Gail O’Hara & Joanna Han Photographs by James Fitzgerald III Styling by Joanna Han lovely tactile square prints with white borders. As the shutter didn’t lock after you had taken each shot, I was forever double—and even triple—exposing my photos. It usually improved whatever I had taken. > A Guide to Analog Photography

Oleg Oprisco Takes Stunning Surreal Photos With An Old $50 Film Camera

Where did you learn to shoot film? Tec Petaja I traveled to Ireland in high school and brought a little film for fun. Not knowing what I was doing, I mainly shot landscapes which was easy because I was in a beautiful Carissa Gallo location. I then took a trip to India and Nepal for three My grandpa taught me to use film when he gave months after high school and that’s where I really fell in love me all his old film cameras he had collected in his life. with photography. I taught myself how to use the camera I also just read some books and asked people for help and thankfully 35mm film was extremely easy to load. along the way! James Fitzgerald: Besides being a photographer on my high school yearbook team way back in 2003 (talk about experience), most of my knowledge of professional Geoff Jensen film photography was taught to me by my brother Parker. I learned to shoot film [properly] in Florence, Italy. We’ve been working together since mid 2011 in Portland Travis Elborough and my knowledge of the craft has increased ever since. I’m still learning, really. I have never had any formal lessons, as such. But I have a few books and websites I consult from time to time and friends with rather more expertise than me whose brains I pick from time to time.

Why don’t you use digital? (Or do you? Explain.) Tec Petaja The main reason for not shooting digital is Travis Elborough because I hate the post process! I’ve also never been able to After receiving an especially dismal batch of get digital to look like film. prints back from the developer, that is certainly a question Carissa Gallo: I do use digital at times, when for I invariably find I am asking myself. The simple answer certain projects it just makes more sense for me to—both would be… because I have several film cameras that I love digital and film can be used as tools to accomplish the using. To go digital would involve buying a new camera desired concept of a shoot, and they have to be used in and spurning my perfectly functioning and previously conjunction or at differing times. I’m grateful to have loyal film cameras. That would feel like abandoning old friends. I do have a digital camera on my phone which I use now and then, but I can’t see myself buying “a proper” DSLR any time soon. Having droned on about the rituals of film for so many years… I probably couldn’t show my James Fitzgerald face in certain bars if I did now. People would probably I’m definitely not opposed to digital photography, assume I’d had some kind of mid-life crisis, like suddenly though I definitely prefer film as a medium. I enjoy the idea buying a Porsche, if I appeared with digital one in tow. of creating something tactile with every photo I take. Geoff Jensen Film can capture elements that digital cannot, and I feel like digital is cheating (depending on who’s using the camera). > Oleg Oprisco and Surrealism

“Shoot, shoot, and shoot some more. What else to say? Drop your job and shoot … if you feel that’s what you want. Freedom, happiness, money… all will come Oleg Oprisco is a brilliantly after you let go and just shoot.” talented photographer from , , who creates stunning surreal images of elegant women in fairy-tale or dream-like settings. There’s one significant difference, however, that sets him apart from other artists who create similar work – Oprisco shoots using old-school film photography.

The fact that he shoots with film means that everything you see in these photos had to be created that way – it couldn’t be done digitally. “I’ve found it ideal to do everything myself. I come up with a concept, create the clothing, choose the location and direct the hair and makeup,” Oprisco explained in an interview with Bored Panda. “Before shooting, I plan the overall color scheme. According to the chosen palette, I select clothes, props, location, etc, making sure that all of it plays within a single color range.” He uses Kiev 6C and Kiev 88 cameras with medium-format film and a variety of lenses.

Pictures by Oleg Oprisco www.oprisco.com finding

Jerry Saltz on Finding Vivian Maier: An Invisible Artist and the Man Who Found Her Vivian Maier Official Finding Vivian Maier Website: www.vivianmaier.com

ivian Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American Vstreet photographer born in City. Although born in the U.S., it was in France that Maier spent most of her youth. Maier returned to the U.S. in 1951 where she took up work as a nanny and care-giver for the rest of her life. In her leisure however, Maier had begun to venture into the art of photography. Consistently taking photos over the course of five decades, she would ultimately leave over 100,000 negatives, most of them shot in Chicago and . Vivian would further indulge in her passionate devotion to documenting the world around her through homemade films, recordings and collections, assembling one of the most fascinating windows into American life in the second half of the twentieth century.

In Finding Vivian Maier, Maloof teams with producer Charlie Siskel to uncover this mystery. Following clues, they trace Maier’s history through New York City, France, and Chicago. Maier was an inveterate wanderer and self-taught photographer, favouring a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera, with an uncanny ability to get close to people from all walks of life. Her artful and comic eye calls to mind the photography of Berenice Abbott and Weegee. Thanks to Maloof’s efforts, critics and galleries have now rallied behind Maier’s work, and recognized her as “one of America’s more insightful street photographers.”

But as Maloof meets people who knew Vivian, new questions arise about her life and work. The families who employed her as a nanny have mixed memories, and hint at her dark side. Would she have even wanted this attention? Answering that question depends on how you interpret different bits of evidence. Regardless, it’s a wonder to behold the world through Vivan Maier’s eyes. > Finding Vivian Maier

he story is almost too stores, at the beach, on ferry boats, in Rolleiflex's square format also negates Article by Jerry Saltz Tgood to be true. One of her room, of kids, herself, and never any top-to-bottom hierarchical left-to- Pictures by Vivian Maier the greatest photographers of the 20th stopped making photographs until her right narrative composition. There’s no century, among the most omnivorous death in 2009. Almost nobody knew. sense of landscape or portrait format; and hyperperceptive visionaries ever She was a hoarder, filling her rooms instead we get an oddly artificial, always to use a camera, was entirely unknown with mountains of stuff. Interviewers formal square view of the world. This before 2007. describe an odd, intimidating, almost reinforces the directness, intensity, and Asperger personality, someone who insistence of Maier's vision. (And of That's when a young walked rigidly and swung her arms ’s, by the way: She too used Chicagoan named John Maloof went as if marching. She took no guff and a Rolleiflex, among other cameras.) looking for images to illustrate a would bring the kids she tended Maier's world is history of his neighborhood that he anywhere — including, at least simultaneously monumental and was writing and bought a box of once, to a slaughterhouse, where she humdrum. She sometimes seems to lie in unprinted negatives at an auction for photographed them. A tall, pretty, but wait for subjects, catching them as they $380. It held between 30,000 and 40,000 unglamorous woman in neutral and get off buses, come up subway steps, frames, shot from the 1950s through often outdated clothes, she always walk out of shops. She gets people in the 1970s, by a woman named Vivian wore her camera around her neck, mid-stride but makes them somehow Maier. The photographs weren’t even when caring for her charges. classical in stature, not fleeting, but useful for his project, but a new world She traveled the world alone, taking whole, self-evident, mortal. Bells go opened and a star was born. The odds pictures everywhere she went, and off when you look at her pictures; you against this exact buyer’s walking also made audio recordings and shot become witness to something big. Proust across the street to this auction and movie film. In 1976, she switched from talked of "the apogee of the particular." stumbling on these photographs, then black-and-white film to color, more or That's here. This gives Maier's work having the wherewithal and dedication less permanently. She rarely printed her psychological and philosophical force, to save and piece together the life story images, carefully storing them instead. something deeply observant. At the same of this extraordinary forgotten woman, She never exhibited them. time, she also has an outsider's view borders on the providential. Maloof has dedicated himself of the world. She's one who watches, Now, in the absorbing to reassembling as much of her work silently observes, is alert to the tiniest 83-minute documentary Finding as he can, and since he bought that disturbance in the visual or psychic field. Vivian Maier, Maloof and co-director initial lot at auction, he has amassed She gives us a vendor nodding off in Charlie Siskel peel back her layers, almost 150,000 negatives, proving his newsstand, framed by magazines allowing us to see where her creative that Maier was an astonishingly and newspapers, giving the dream to a universe came from, how she productive, driven artist. She's also sleeper. The valor of being alive comes functioned, what she made. Much of a great one. Her pictures can stand into focus. the film is made up of straightforward alongside of and sometimes recall interviews with her former employers those of Cartier-Bresson, Lisette he Times' otherwise interspersed with wonderful visuals: Model, Robert Frank, André Kertesz, Texcellent Manohla Dargis Maloof laying out all of Maier's stuff Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Walker churlishly labeled this documentary "a on the floor or describing his attempts Evans, Gary Winogrand, Richard feature-length advertisement for Mr. to track her down, and a great array Avedon, and Weegee. Maloof's commercial venture as the of her amazing pictures. Working as principal owner of her work." This sort a nanny in the Chicago area, Maier hat Rolleiflex — a twin- of cynical snappishness is cropping up found positions where she could be Tlens reflex camera — a lot in many critics’ work of late — the taken care of so that she could take helped unlock her power as an artist. idea that if there's any profit involved, care of her art. She was a servant of her As the photographer Joel Meyerowitz the work must be less pure, less good, talent, compelled to use her servitude notes in the film, it doesn’t require the more suspect. Whatever: I love this to make what she needed to make. photographer to raise the camera to her advertisement. Besides: Maloof tried face in a dramatic, obvious, intimidating to get MoMA interested in Maier's any will find her story gesture, the way a single-lens reflex work. In the film, he shows us and Mcompelling and filled does. Instead, the Rolleiflex user looks reads the perfunctory rejection letter with pathos. Born in New York in down into the top of the camera, held at he got from the museum. He was on 1926, she started taking photos in 1949, waist level, in order to focus and frame. his own. No one else wanted to take with a Brownie. Three years later she Maier thus could get close to her subjects on the responsibility of unearthing and acquired a state-of-the-art Rolleiflex without their knowing it, unobtrusively, bringing to light this truly great artist. and really started bearing down on without any aggressive motion. This History will be grateful to him, and no her vision, shooting everywhere she explains some of the frame-filling one should look back cynically at his went, mainly on the street, but also in closeness of many of her subjects. The commitment to Vivian Maier. Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world. OLD LENSES Maria Montessori, Lagos, Nigeria how to use, choose and adapt old film lenses for your new DSLR

Old gear, new skills A great way to breathe new life (often at little cost) into But remember, you’ll lose your photography is to adapt old lenses to use with your many automatic features when digital camera. There are two main options when it comes using an old lens on a digital to choosing old lenses for your digital camera – using an old camera, so you have to focus manual focus lens, or modern, low-tech glass from Lensbaby, manually (check out our in-depth Diana or other specialists. Both solutions mean you will sacrifice some of the automatic features on your digital guide to Manual focus: what you camera, but that’s part of the appeal. need to know to get sharp pictures). Because you aren’t able to Manual labour rely on the camera to set everything The advantage of using the that’s ideal when you are first starting for you, it feels much more like Lensbaby or Diana lenses is that to out with photography. If you’re lucky, shooting with an old-fashioned some extent you know what you you can pick up these high-quality camera (for more on how your camera are going to get, as each lens has portrait lenses for a song. works, see Digital cameras: what the been designed with a particular Digital Camera magazine’s manual doesn’t teach you). ‘look’ in mind. editor Geoff Harris got a pristine There’s also something very So if you want the soft-focus Olympus Zuiko 50mm lens with an satisfying about setting the focus look of using a very basic lens, you equally clean OM10 SLR camera body using a large manual focus ring can choose the Lensbaby Plastic optic, for just £50 from a charity shop, and compared with the small control on or one of the original models for the he probably could have got it even most autofocus lenses, again adding tilt/shift effect. cheaper on eBay. to the authenticity of your retro When it comes to using old The wide aperture can photography adventure. manual focus lenses, the results you produce very shallow depth of field, Getting to grips with manual get will be slightly more random, as while the greater focal length on focus, and figuring out how to expose each lens will give slightly different APS-C (75mm) or Four Thirds cameras correctly with an old lens, may seem results – but that’s half the fun! (100mm) makes it a great choice for like hard work, but these skills will A 50mm f/1.8 is a classic lens really striking people shots. prove useful whatever gear you use. Picture by: GK Sholanke