Introducing Camille Bruya (@cbruya) — North America's Honorary LomoHome of April 2024

In celebration of our extremely talented community, the team at Lomography USA has started honoring their favorite active Lomographers on our website for "LomoHome of the Month."

This month, we're highlighting community member Camille Bruya (@cbruya) for her eye-catching and often experimental photography.

With a background as a musician for over a decade, Camille’s current creative work revolves around photographing musicians, creating graphics for music festivals, and documenting live shows — just to name a few examples of how she combines all of her interests within her everyday art-making process.

The following words are by @cbruya.

Lomographic Beginnings

I started shooting photos when I was just a little kid. I got my first camera for my 8th birthday and have loved photographing ever since.

Last year, I won Lomography's Lomo'Instant Automat camera via a film photo competition I entered into with a local photo store (shoutout to Pro Photo Supply!)

Admittedly, I didn't know much about Lomography at the time and did some research into the company, which brought me to LomoHomes. I absolutely loved the community of analogue lovers, and that I was able to look up photo examples from specific film stocks and cameras.

Living an Analogue Lifestyle

I often use the Lomo'Instant Automat, it's super customizable and I love experimenting with its different lens adapters. My go-to 35 mm is the Nikon FM10, it's never failed me and I've used it for almost six years now. I've lately gotten into medium format and have been using my grandpa's Super Richoflex. It's a very simple TLR, nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

Lately I've been experimenting with lots of different film stocks to see what I like, including lots of Lomography's supply, so I honestly don't have a stock that I consistently shoot with.

I think in this digital age, it's all the more satisfying to create tangible art. I also feel a lot closer to my family and ancestry by using the cameras they once used. Additionally, I love being pushed creatively by film's limited number of frames, or the uncontrollable eccentricities of different stocks and cameras. There are so many great things about film!

Golden Rule #3 resonates with me. Sometimes, photography is thought of as purely documentary, that it just captures a moment as it happens, but as photographers, we put ourselves into those moments by choosing how to capture them—we control not only what people see, but also what they don't see. Our cameras are an extension of what we understand about the world and what we want others to know about it.

I don't necessarily have an all-time favorite photograph that I’ve taken, but one that sticks out to me is an accidental double exposure I made of my friend Avery and his guitar.

I had just started shooting medium format and using my grandpa's Super Richoflex and I forgot to advance the film for the last frame. This shot really inspired me to keep using that Richoflex and experiment more with in-camera double exposures.

Looking to the Future

I would love for more older film stocks to become available again. There are so many unique, older cameras out there that are basically unusable as they only take film that doesn't exist anymore (or that's at least widely available, sometimes you can retrofit things to make it work but it's tough).

I think it's awesome that Lomography has brought back 110 film, and would love to see 116, 127 and peel apart pack film have a rebirth as well.

A few months ago, I received a great number of negatives and prints from both sides of my family dating back to the late 1800s. I also received almost a dozen of the old cameras they used to capture many of the images with (this includes a Brownie Flashmite, the aforementioned Richoflex, a Magicflash Telephoto 110, 35mm Olympus Infinity and more.)

It's my goal to revisit many of the original locations where the images were captured and rephotograph them myself with the same cameras. I hope to discover more about my family and their stories, as well as gain a better sense of who I am as a photographer and artist by placing myself where the original photos were taken and by using the same film/cameras.

With the amount of material I have and how spread out my family is across the U.S and Canada, this will take years, but I am up for the challenge! You can view a sample of my family's scanned images here, on my website.

I am always looking for more connections in the analogue world! If anyone wants to connect, feel free to reach out via LomoHome or Instagram. Thanks to Lomography for keeping film alive and thanks to The Shutterbug in Beaverton, OR for developing all my film.

If you're interested in keeping up with Camille and her artistic journey, make sure to check out her LomoHome, Instagram, and website.

written by eloffreno on 2024-05-25 #gear #culture #news #people #medium-format #35mm #experimental #canada #instant #lomohome #community #community-member #multimedia #n120 #lomohome-of-the-month