SOBS: Photography: Fifteen Dollar Detection

Being a photographer is like being a detective, looking for clues and hopefully exposing a mystery. The art of my photography is an effort to clarify, to find meaning and significance in daily life. These images are records of what I've done, where I've been and the people I've known.

The images I discover are tucked in the corner, around the bend, in back of, overhead, organized and separated. They are the small specifics, the simple details of the world around me. These are the images that speak to me. I gravitate to their simple, solid structure. I am in awe of the beauty of their pure form. I am drawn to shapes, patterns, colors and an image's presence.

In order to search for these clues I have chosen to arm myself with a toy camera, a fifteen-dollar plastic Holga camera held together with rubber bands and black tape. I believe that the newest and most advanced equipment is not needed in order to create a moving photograph. There is a freedom from using a camera that has only one shutter speed and two apertures. There is a casualness of shooting and seeing what goes by. You experience things in the moment.

The Holga can have light leaks on the edges which create moving highlights in my images. Sometimes the light leaks will cause an eerie red glow, or a morphing of light in the background. Its plastic lens and fixed focus occasionally fall out of focus or cause ghost images. When this happens, an ordinary photo becomes extraordinary. Because of these "defects," the resulting images are unique and cannot be reproduced exactly the same way twice.

In this series of photographs, the images are abstract, up-close, skewed, so calm that they are not immediately identifiable. They are what the viewer wants them to be: a feeling, texture, shape, or nature. With no distractions, these photos are a brief pause in the viewer's understanding of a cluttered world.

— John Flak