Photography Curated by Sean Bonner

What is the mystery of photography? Why do we love the static image? What is it that these fragments of reality, frozen in time tell us? What is it about the photograph’s ability to transcend commonplace existence that has taken it from an unrecognized set of chemical reactions to the most popular and life-changing art-form the history of the world has ever seen?

Are we seeking knowledge of our place within the greater universal complexity? Or could it be that we are a conceited bunch of heretic animals in love with posing for and fawning over our own graven image? Is it not rather that we just love to command machines, fiddle with knobs, push brightly colored buttons and play with toys?

Ahh, toys. Ask most people when they started to fall in love with photography and many, if not most will hark back to the golden days of their childhood, when life was simpler, the sun shone brighter and film was, as the only option available, still cheap. Most photographers of today who were raised in the odd limbo generation of the 70s and 80s grew up on one or more of the futuristic Polaroid instant cameras kicking around the house. Or maybe you had the cartridge-based 110 film and disc cameras, invented by Kodak and popularized with the Kodacolor VR, or any number of short-lived point and shoot cameras, that weren’t toy cameras per se, but today can be found lining the discount bins of used camera resellers and garage sales alike, the world over.

When Fuji Camera introduced the Fujipet camera, marketed to a solely Japanese audience, this plastic camera would go on to introduce the hitherto western concept of leisure combined with the snapshot, for use by the whole family. From the instruction manual, “With the Fujipet Camera you can the pictures very easily just as you manipulate your knife and fork…The Fujipet Camera enjoys great popularity among children, mothers and all the members of the family and affords happiness in all homes.”

What about the Hong Kong novelty manufacturer Great Wall Plastic Factory, in first producing the Diana, which in turn spawned tens of hundreds of clones, that unwittingly launched the modern day toy camera revolution. They were just trying to make a fast buck. In doing so, they made history.

Thanks in large part to Mr. T.M. Lee – inventor of the Holga – is it true that anyone can be a photographer?

Despite all signs to the contrary, it was not the original goal of Mr. Lee, nor any of the other manufacturers, to make toys, but rather to ensure that people were fascinated and interested in creative film photography. As the Chinese middle class grew due to economic reform of the 80s – and with it buying power and hunger for better technology – many cheaper products, like Holga, lost ground and were nearly completely lost in the shuffle toward the new paradigm of the 90s tech boom.

As artists, amateur photographers and institutions of higher learning got in on the ground floor of the Holga Revolution, business boomed for Mr. Lee and Universal Electronic- largely in part to the Austrian-based Lomographic Society licensing and repackaging the Holga (as done with the glass-lensed Lomo LC-A – often thought of as a “toy” as well) in marketable and highly profitable kits. He was amazed at the resurgence of his twenty year-old baby, remarking it was “out of my imagination!” and smartly thought to capitalize on this newfound “Toy Camera” popularity by diversifying into a wider range of products. Add-ons for the Holga or completely new cameras (the Micro 110, 6×9/6×12 Pinhole, 3D Stereo, Twin Lens Reflex, a whole range of 135mm cameras, fish-eye lenses, color flashes, etc.) became profitable ways to expand into areas previously unimagined. The future was very bright indeed.

To ask what is the future of photography is too big for anyone to take on except in bite-size chunks. One might be well served to look back to the origins of capturing images for answers to why images- and especially those taken with shoddily-crafted plastic parts which often “leak” light, vignette uncontrollably, and capture images so randomly that the photographer would have no guarantee that any exposure will come out at all- have transfixed us deer-like in the headlights of a tsunami of cause and effect. Many of which have such wide ranging societal repercussions that we would be smart to admit no one really has any idea of what’s happening, let alone what’s on the horizon.

To extrapolate digital photography as a direct result of the Toy Camera boom, to say that Holga created the digital point and shoot in your mobile phone, to credit Hong Konger novelty and flash manufacturers with the digital paradigm as well as their own eventual decline, is not too far a stretch. What will emerge from the next few digital decades, after the Hipstamatic iPhone filter fad has worn off? A perpetual backlash against time-tested, though also time-consuming, archival methods or as Mr. Lee experienced when the unpredictable wave of economic tide turned the middle class Chinese off his product and hipsters on – a rebirth of interest in film and more importantly, sales?

Read the continued Interview with Holga Limited’s Christine So here.

[View with PicLens]

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com if you have any questions or comments on these photos.

Pulling up just before sunrise at the Salton Sea, California’s biggest lake, is a surreal experience. It is eerily quiet at this time of day, with only the sound of the lapping water, a few desolate cries of waking birds and the noise of Polaroid cameras as we pull the film through the rollers.  It reminds me of Cormack McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic tale The Road, with artifacts littering the area: abandoned and (partially) destroyed mobile homes, a chair in the water, a lone boot, a pink sink, a bent BBQ. One is left to wonder what has happened.

Salton City © Nathalie Farigu

At the beginning of the 20th century, when farmers settled in the Imperial Valley, there was a need to tap into the Colorado River for irrigation purposes. The California Development Company dredged two intake gorges just north of the Mexican border without using floodgates. For three years, the system worked well, but in the summer of 1904 the flow of water stopped when intakes became clogged with silt deposits from the river. At that point another intake gorge was created, and once again, a floodgate was omitted. This human error resulted in a massive flood, when in 1907 the Colorado River began to swell from heavy rainfall and snowmelt. The enormous volume of water breached a dike in the Imperial Valley, resulting in the two rivers carrying it all into what became then known as the Salton Sink, and creating the Salton Sea.

Bombay Beach

As a consequence of not having an outlet, the Salton Sea gets saltier every year; water is lost through evaporation, disappears and the salt stays behind. At the moment, the Salton Sea is about 25% saltier than the ocean. One can consider this ghastly place as one of the country’s largest ecological disasters: massive fish die-offs are common, due to a lack of oxygen in the water, and the presence of many parasites. The shores are lined with bones from dead fish.

It’s difficult to imagine now but in the 1950s the Salton Sea was a happening holiday spot, and the area brimmed with activity. As the sea transformed, its popularity waned. Developers started their exodus in the 1970s, and high water levels in the 1980s flooded many business and private properties, leaving them abandoned and in decay.

Massive fish die-offs at Bombay Beach.

After a day of driving around the Salton Sea, and a pile of Polaroids spread out on the car dashboard, we head down to the Ski Inn for a greasy patty melt. While at Bombay Beach’s only eatery, another word comes to mind besides “disaster” when trying to describe what we saw: dreamscape, horrific and beautifully surreal at the same time. Right now it is not apparent what will happen to the communities around the Salton Sea, but despite the evident decline, there are pockets of life at places such as Bombay Beach. As California’s needs evolve, a place may be found for the Salton Sea, a place that has yet to be defined.

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information on licensing these and other photographs on this issue.

This piece has been produced with content from the following Magnesium members:
Japan by Jim O’Connell / Magnesium
Denmark by Arnaud De Grave / Magnesium
Holland by Nathalie Farigu / Magnesium
Additional photographs by:
Pete Barr-Watson / Magnesium
David Teter / Magnesium

On July 3rd in 1916, Lawrence “Chubby” Woodman, dropped a few battered clams into the fryer he normally used for French fries at his roadside stand in Essex, Massachusetts, not having any idea that almost a hundred years later, I’d be sitting here in Tokyo, craving a hot dog roll filled with his creation.

My ex-wife introduced me to clam rolls in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a short drive from her family’s summer cottage. “Ooh, clam rolls,” she said, and a short time later, we were sitting outside a shack near the water digging into a couple of them. It’s been more than fifteen years since that day, but the memory of those clams rolls has my mouth watering and stomach rumbling in anticipation of something too far away to procure.

Another legendary guilty pleasure, one that has been lost to history, was the Little Tavern “Slider,” a small hamburger that was best bought a dozen at a time. “Buy ‘em by the bag…” their signs proclaimed and yes, we did. For me, the place to grab a bag of sliders was the Little Tavern in Georgetown. In mid1980′s in the wee hours of the morning, after clubbing or before hopping to another club, we’d head up Wisconsin Avenue to the familiar little chateau-styled building clad in green and white tile. The preferred way to eat sliders was with mustard — somehow, ketchup never tasted right on them. Founded in 1927, Little Taverns were a familiar sight all over the DC / Baltimore area, with around 70 shops at their peak. But their numbers declined at the end of the century; they limped along for another decade or so, until the last Little Tavern closed in 2008.

The delights from these food emporiums aren’t the sort of meals you serve up on a first date, nor are they the sort of places you eat at every day (unless you have a very good cardiologist). They’re guilty pleasures to be savored, food shared amongst trusted friends and select initiates in a ritual of indiscretion and indulgence; saying “let’s go grab a bag of sliders” is much the same as saying “let’s be bad” with a devilish glint in your eye.

Customer samples "kaki fry" or fried oysters at a fish shop in Tokyo

Every culture has food like this. In Japan, there’s ramen, of course, considered by many to be the quintessential Japanese fast food. Ramen, while universally inexpensive, can vary widely in its quality. Avoiding mediocre ramen is key—the reward for finding a good bowl is a meal that is sublime. It’s worth the effort.

N.B.: Be forewarned that you should never mention “ramen noodles,” the plastic-wrapped staple of college kids in discussions of “ramen” (occasionally Romanized as “lamen”) as you will be branded a fool. As the Oshima Ramen chain of shops proclaim, “Ramen is a gift from God.” They may be saying that with tongue planted firmly in cheek, but it’s best to play it safe and just agree.

If you see a line of more than a couple of people waiting to get in to a ramen shop in Tokyo, you might as well cancel your plans and join the queue, because it’s likely to be an amazing experience. “Ramen Jiro” in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district is a place like this, where for under ten dollars, you get a legendarily huge bowl, but true ramen connoisseurs will scoff, saying that Ramen Jiro’s main appeal is the immense size of the portions, not the quality of the ramen. Listing the top ramen-ya (ramen shops) here would likely invite an un-winnable battle of opinions, so I’ll refrain from trying, but they’re easy to find—either look for the queue, or ask a trusted friend.

Then there’s Okonomiyaki, a kind of savory pancake, rich with varied ingredients and topped with seaweed flakes, dried bonito, Kewpie mayonnaise and/or a thick brown sweet sauce akin to A1 steak sauce. Monjyayaki is a thinner variant, said to originate not far from Tsukiji’s famous fish market, best had in the little shops of Tsukushima, where each table is equipped with a griddle from which it’s directly eaten with little metal scrapers.

Takoyaki is a similar batter, but made into spheres on a special griddle, each with a piece or two of tough octopus meat. It’s best had when bought at a roadside stand or summer festival, especially when prepared by the sort of guy you would not want to meet in a dark alley. “The secret ingredient to good takoyaki is fear,” a friend is fond of saying.

To be honest, though, it’s hard to feel the same level of guilt eating this sort of food in Japan, as on the whole, the dishes are fresh, the ingredients are the same as you might buy for your own kitchen and, well, it’s Japanese and as a people, they just seem so healthy. Not so in other places:

First of all I’d like to state that, as a French man, there is no such thing as junk food in my diet (at least that I’d confess if no torture is involved). There is plenty of junk food to be found in the streets of Copenhagen; as everywhere else in the world we get our share of McDonald and that sort of things. In certain areas of the city the shawarma is ruling as the King of Junk, in other places it is called kebab but it is basically the same thing. And there is the pølsevogn (literally “sausage wagon”) which is the local version of the hot-dog stand so dear to the heart of new-yorkers. A complete sociological study would be necessary to understand that thing, what with old guys blocking traffic while going from wherever those mighty beasts sleep to the spot where they’ll deliver the greasy goods to customers of all ages… And the fact that they sell French hot-dog is not enough to have me try it!

A customer gluttonying down a sausage at a pølsevogn in the deep winter of Copenhagen...

So I don’t like, let alone love, junk food. So why then contribute?
Because there is that thing called smørrebrød which has a weird status around here. One can find smørrebrød in many variations but also in many caste, matter of speaking. There are smørrebrød of the junk kind, of the home made kind (of course) and of the gourmet kind, found in restaurants. Many Danes eat smørrebrød everyday for lunch, either they bring it in a little lunch box or they buy it from a smørrebrød-to-go shop. It is a common sight to see people in the streets with white little boxes around lunchtime. Although, it beats me how they can eat them properly as it becomes quite rapidly a mess as there is nothing to top them. The exact same concept can be found in restaurants, specialized restaurants of high standards. And that is why I found it fascinating, it would be like having three stars restaurants making hot-dogs.

Lunch box, the Danish style.

Technically it is an “open-ended sandwich”, meaning a sandwich with only one piece of bread. Smøre means butter, brod means bread. So that’s what you get, bread of the dark/black kind (more a compaction of cereals if you ask me), butter and then stuff on top, a lot of stuff. You have from one up to three items piled up on top of that ridiculously small piece of bread. Usually one major and two minors. Major can be fried fish, liver paste, ham, eggs, etc. Minor is usually some kind of vegetable in various state of conditioning: coleslaw salad, beetroot, cucumber, you name it… Then a sauce of some sort: mayonnaise, etc. and sometimes an additional topping: fried bacon, crumbles of bread, fried onions, shrimps and what have you. I have always suspected that a very strict code was ruling this as a state affair, the Danes being quite close to traditionalists. Surely one cannot mix some of the major with some of the minors as one pleases. I remember the first time I went to the cantina of the university where I work. One cantina was for everybody (mainly students) and the other one was for staff. In the first one smørebrod were aligned and prepared beforehand for one to shovel in one’s plate whereas in the latter one had to make them oneself being presented with a buffet of many ingredients. For at least one year I didn’t dare doing it, picturing myself trying to go through the cashier toll. I was sweating profusely imagining the girl in the white outfit looking at me sadly and doing a shy negative sign of the head, sending me back to the buffet for the choice of a bad combination of ingredients.

Smørrebrød(s) lined up and ready to be consumed.

A regular customer shovelling his prey to his plate at lunch break.

But all in all, at the end of it, what they do love here is their café cold-feet as they say: the dreaded “pølsevogn”…

(by Nathalie Farigu / Magnesium)

Snacking is not a modern phenomenon. As a matter of fact, for centuries people have satisfied their cravings for sugar, fat and cholesterol with little in between meals. When the snack attack struck the ancient Romans, they would rush to the thermopolium, which was a little shop selling warm wine and the ancient equivalent of what we now know as fast food. And apparently, the author Pliny was a big fan of eggs marinated in vinegar, which were subsequently deep fried. Other Roman snacks included boiled eggs with pine nut sauce, and libum, a sweet cheesecake.

Those dishes seem to require an awful lot of preparation. Luckily,  the Dutch alternative only requires a Euro or two and a visit to the automatiek, a special kind of vending machine. An almost exclusively Dutch phenomenon, it’s made up of rows of little heated boxes designed to keep the delicacies warm. Behind little glass doors you’ll find enough fat and cholesterol to eat your heart out, literally. Word is that the automatiek originated in Germany at the beginning of  the 20th century. However, its popularity waned after the sixties and the automatiek disappeared everywhere but the Netherlands, where it remains popular til this day.

One of the most popular items you’ll find at the automatiek is the kroket, which is a meat (mostly beef) ragout covered in breadcrumbs, then deep fried beyond recognition. Though it might not win any prizes for looks, it sure does for taste. Especially on a cold winter day, it’s very comforting to bite into a freshly deep fried kroket, perfectly crunchy on the outside, hot, gooey and salty on the inside. It’s the perfect snack in between meals, or after a night of debauchery and libations on the town.

When asked what food they’d miss the most while abroad, the majority of the Dutch population will tell you it’s the kroket. Luckily, the Dutch kroket has found its way onto a few menus of restaurants abroad as well. I found, and consequently enjoyed a kroket in places such as Lovina, Bali and Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. You just don’t get to pull it from the ‘muur’ (Dutch word for ‘wall’).

The kroket isn’t exactly a Dutch invention. It originated in France and can be found in many countries all over the world with a filling of cheese, shrimp, potatoes and/or vegetables. However, the beef kroket is a typically Dutch snack.

Most automatieken are not stand-alone walls of greasy goodness, there’s usually a counter available where you can order drinks and French fries called ‘patat’, which are often served with mayonnaise (‘patat met’). Other popular choices are ‘patat speciaal’ which are fries served with mayo, ketchup and raw onions, or the extremely delicious ‘patatje oorlog’ (war-style French fries) which will make your cholesterol levels soar beyond your wildest dreams and your fat cells scream with orgasmic delight, with its serving of mayo and fatty peanut sauce.

So, what kind of people commit these dietary crimes? According to a recent survey 75% of the Dutch population admits to eating a kroket every once in a while. I bet the other 25% hasn’t come out of the kroket closet yet.

I know that I, as a ‘vegetarian’, whenever I’m in Holland enjoy a ‘vette bek’ (which translates into ‘a greasy mouth’) on a regular basis. As my sister said: ‘It’s oh so bad, but so so good.’