Lomography

An imaginary story based on what I believe about photography.

“Magic?… There is no such thing as magic!”…

…little George said and laughed.

“Oh, really?”, Anna said and stopped walking while staring at the little boy.

She was his older sister and they had gone for a walk in a field full of bloomed colorful spring flowers during a Saturday sunny morning.

“So, tell me, why do you say that? What does magic mean to you?”, Anna said.

George turned over and close his eyes for a while, thinking…

“Hmm… Well, magic is a little boy like me, flying around, like Peter Pan did in that story you read me last night!”

Anna smiled…

“Sure, honey, that’s magic too. But don’t just think about the impossible. Try to find magic in something around you. Like…oh, like this creature!”,

Anna said and bent over a white daisy on which a tiny bee was buzzing, collecting the flower’s precious juice. George sat on the ground next to his sister, his eyes staring at the noisy bee.

“That’s just a bee!”

“Exactly!”, Anna said.

“She can fly, but what you don’t know is that she is the one who makes all these flowers bloom! Just by carrying some flower powder on her little, tiny feet.”

Little George kept staring at the bee without really understanding his sister’s point.
Anna sighed and sat next to him.

“You can’t see it, can you?”.

He hugged him and remained silent for a moment. Then she opened her bag and grabbed a small black and blue box.

“You know what this is, George?”

“A camera, Ann.”.

“Correct!”, Anna said and put her Diana camera on George’s hands. “Come on, make your sister proud!”

Anna was studying Fine Arts but her love, ever since she was little, was photography. Diana was a part of her, a part of her life, a part of her own eyes. Now it was time to show her magic to someone else.

“Come on George, don’t be scared! Click-o-click on something!”

The little boy was surprised but also full of joy now that he could use his older sister’s camera. He gently put his eye on the camera’s viewfinder and turned around trying to find something that he liked. He stared at that little bee once more.

Click!

“I did it!!!”, he said full of joy, jumping around with a huge smile on his face.

Anna smiled, took her little brother’s hand and stood up.

“Come on, it’s time to show you some real magic! Some of MY kind of magic!”, said and started walking with George.

After a while, they were home, heading towards Anna’s room. When they entered, George noticed the door of, what he called, “Anna’s secret room” where he was not allowed to enter. Well, until now…

Anna asked George to stay outside for a while and took Diana with her. She closed the door, placing a “working” sign on the handle. For some minutes George could only hear some sounds of cutting paper, clicking plastic and metal stuff etc.

Then Anna opened the door and said:

“This will take a while, sweetie, but I promise that what is about to come after will put a huge smile on your cute face!”, and closed the door again.

George started walking around his sister’s room. He stared outside her window which had a view towards the fields they were walking between a little while ago. He moved to the wall next to the “secret room’s” door and opened his mouth in surprise. The whole wall was full of color and B&W photos, obviously Anna’s. He studied each one of them. There were photos of flowers, people, animals, cities… All of them had something beautiful that he couldn’t describe… Something almost…

…Magical…

After some minutes Anna opened the door and invited George in the dark room.

“Are you scared honey? I have to close the door”, Anna said.

George said no and then Anna closed the door again and turned on a red light.

“Now, let me show you something greater than Peter Pan!”, said and moved towards the sink.

She gently baptized a piece of blank white paper inside the first tray and then it happened… George’s eyes and mouth opened wide open full of surprise!

“Woah!!! How did you do that?!”

Anna laughed.

“I told you that I would show you some magic, didn’t I?”

George kept staring at the piece of paper in the tray which was no longer blank, but had an image of a flower on it that looked quite familiar to him…

After the whole process of printing the photo Anna hanged the print on a string which was held from the walls.
“Now we will wait for a few minutes”, she said and walked out the room with George who hadn’t yet realized what he had seen happening.
He always wondered how photos were taken and still he couldn’t understand it.

He kept walking around the room and asking Anna every 5 seconds: “Can I get it now?”. After some minutes Anna finally answered “Yes!” and George almost broke the door while entering inside the dark room and in a few seconds he came out, holding the photo on his hands near his stunned face, walking slowly, in silence, towards Ann.

He looked at his sister…

“Is this MY photo?”

Anna corrected him:

“No, its your MAGIC. What you’re holding is a piece of Neverland. Be Peter Pan!”.

He gave him Diana and said:

“Spread around some magic dust and fly, honey! Each and every click will get you closer to flying!”

…………………………………………..

“I will never forget that day”…

That’s what George said while laying on a flower bed, in the exact same fields he had walked with his sister 10 years ago, holding the same Diana, “click-o-click”-ing around “Neverland”…

It has been a few months since he had the third decade of his life…

A 20 year old Peter Pan who was finally about to fly…