Lomography

The only thing worrying me 36 weeks and 2 days into my pregnancy is the thought of going through with it all and having no evidence; whether it be paper, print or image, to then be able to hold as a token of my time preparing for a time that is likely to only happen once or twice in my lifetime.

I don’t have a bad long-term memory, in fact I think it’s quite the opposite. I love family photo-albums, postcards, and nondescript diary entries, and truly believe a lot of our modern memories will be lost due to digital technology and the way people photograph their everyday these days…

Polaroid cameras and Lomographic ideas are a lot more personal to me. I’ll take ages to decide on a particular film stock. There’s so much importance to be found; in the colour, tones and aspect ratio of an image, even down to camera’s style; I’ll rack my brains, sometimes for weeks at a time over the type of camera, even down to it not ‘looking’ right…

For my ‘pregnant’ photographs I knew I had to choose carefully. When people have found out about my news, many have responded with ideas that it’’ll be the most photographed event imaginable; self portraits and daily snapshots fill their minds, but my plan was far from it. Other than trying to collect Automat self-portraits as much as I could (depending on spare time, £3 in spare change, and the machine actually working), I really didn’t see the point in taking a photo-a-day, to then time-lapse at the end of 9 months; the strict scheduling would get in the way of the creativity for me, and I’d see it as more of a chore over enjoyment. All I wanted was a handful of images, just one page of a scrapbook to fill and I’d be happy.

I’ve waited weeks to finally shoot the images I see so clearly in my head- and I know that this project will never have the opportunity to be put on the back-burner for a better time.

I prepare a strong colour palette, swaying from pastel shades to primary desires, so along with some basic lighting ideas, all I was now waiting for was the daily cycle of the sun.

Two o’clock is my time and light of choice. 4 single PX Colour images were shot in total

I watch the images revel and reveal in wonder. The chemical reactions divide and burst with character seconds, minutes, hours, even days after. I see separate colours appear and disappear with every blink of an eye and make sure I scan at regular intervals in case of losing something special…

I think I like analogue photography so much because of this secret power it seems to hold. I could have taken a photograph every day for the past 8 or so months and record what could directly be seen, but this effortless and overstated approach seems less personal than a handful of instant images, that might not even look ‘good’ in a photographically and pristine way—but they’ll be there, ‘something to keep.’ *

*I was given a very special birthday present a few weeks ago, along with the words ‘Something to Keep’, so I could think of nothing more than to name my series of photographs with the same air of sentimentality.