Flavia Slick’s Island Diaries With Lomography

Flavia Slick (@flaviaslick) got in touch recently to share with us her ongoing analogue photography project - Hot spots Home: a heart and earth process, which evolved during her travels for work as a scientific researcher in animal communication and cognition.

For this project she utilized a range of Lomography cameras and film to fully explore her subjects from varied creative perspectives, including the Lomo’Instant Square Glass, Simple Use Reloadable Film Camera, LomoChrome Purple, LomoChrome Metropolis and Lomography Redscale film.

Flavia describes herself as having a polyhedric (many-sided) personality, due to her inner need to express herself artistically, gain varied knowledge, and experience new stimuli outside of her scientific work. This is a familiar feeling for many of us Lomographers who, whatever our day jobs may be, find ourselves seeking out the unique challenges and joys of analogue photography.

Flavia has been shooting on film for ten years and has been part of the Lomography community for three. She loves to shoot in a free and experimental way, learning from mistakes, taking risks and trying every combination of unique cameras and film she can get her hands on.

Hot spots Home: a heart and earth process is an ongoing photographic project about volcanic islands, in particular Tenerife, Iceland, Ischia, and Ventotene. “I feel a strong connection between elements and nature itself,” Flavia tells us. “The power that lies in these islands is deep and ancestral.” In her photo series she shares her vision through the use of different analogue cameras and film formats, using light in all its spectrum and showing the beauty of these big rocks surrounded by water but full of fire.

Here Flavia shares her photos from her time on these islands and tells us more about the project in her own words.

Three years ago I started my long-time adventure across volcanic islands. A spontaneous journey that began with Ischia and Ventotene, living on a sailing ship dated 1930, working as a researcher for and with the whales. For three years in a row each summer I went there, on these two islands. Then this last autumn I moved to Iceland for a couple of months, and immediately after I landed in Tenerife, where I am studying parrot cognition.

A constellation of events led me on this amazing journey to experience the volcanic islands of the world as home for different periods of my life. The project started from this, from places and traveling but it’s also about the study of the double and the complementary in nature as in the human mythology and spirit.

These are two of my favorite photos from the series, both recently shot in Tenerife. In the first I really like the triangular and ascending composition, the pure representation of the Teide and its landscape and habitats. I love how LomoChrome Purple Film 100-400 35 mm enhances natural landscapes, making them unknown planets still to discover.

This second one is the Drago Milenario, a millennial tree of the species Dracaena Draco, shot on Lomography Redscale XR 50-200 35 mm. I am in love with the light game of the crown, the radial symmetry that is so powerful in nature, the sky through the countless branches and that aura of magic around. The legend of this tree narrates that it protected an indigenous woman from the harassment of a merchant navigator who landed on the island, shielding her from an arrow and bleeding.

I have to say that I was really surprised by the Lomography Redscale XR 50-200 35 mm, earlier I just once used a roll of Lomography Redscale XR 50-200 120 but it was expired so I didn’t see how it really could have come out. When I got the scan of this one I was so excited about the shades of yellow, red and orange. I love warm palettes, and the results were incredible and really satisfying.

Probably my favorite camera to use was the Lomo'Instant Square Glass Combo, an incredible analogue instant camera. The emotion of the live development is always unique, the excitement and expectation to wait and then see what is coming out of the film, that appears under your eyes.

Now in Tenerife, I live at the feet of Teide, the highest point of Spain. Here I work with parrots, studying their cognitive skills and behavior. I feel a magnetic connection to these places. They came one by another without my intention to plan this, and when I realized it was like an epiphany since the least common multiple of these islands are the four elements. Fire from the depth of the earth gets into the water, and creates earth outside in the air, surrounded by water.

Thank you to Flavia for sharing her project with us! keep up with her photography on Instagram and her LomoHome.

written by alexgray on 2023-08-08 #gear #people #places #travel #summer #islands #lomography-redscale #lomochrome-purple #lomo-instant-square-glass