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.

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

In a show of defiance against the gray economy, southern Florida continues to attract millions of visitors for fun in the winter sun.

In the 1980s it was the destination of choice for underage binge drinking, recreational drug use, and casual sex.

These days Florida attracts nearly one in four US retirees.

Due to its year-round warm climate, low tax burden, and glut of golf courses, Florida now leads the country in percentage of residents over the age of 65.

The health of Florida’s economy is now more than ever reliant on the wealthier retiree until the real estate market can recover, a likely distant reality.

Behind this overly paraphrased and idealized veneer of “the good life”, there exists a San Francisco Bay Area that is far more textured and heterogeneous than meets the eye, a world most easily seen from a low-speed, low-flying aircraft.

An hour in the sky reveals to the observer a past of industrial expansion and large scale infrastructure that is only superficially experienced by most of the locals on their morning commutes. Heavy industry maintains a prominent foothold in the region, a short drive away from the Bohemian pleasures of a city that lives very much within itself and its alluring distractions. The scale of nearby refineries, while notable when seen from a highway at 70 mph, is truly astounding from 2000 feet. The countless cylindrical fuel tanks, slender chimneys and intricate tubing feeding the belly of the petroleum transformation process are part of a carefully engineered machine that functions day in and day out to grease our modern economy.

The Bay Area is also home to one of the largest container ports in the Western United States, a major inter-modal container operation. According to the Port of Oakland website:

Strategically positioned adjacent to a major highway to Los Angeles, in the geographical heart of the economically vibrant Silicon Valley/San Francisco corridor, San Francisco International Airport (or SFO) remains one of the few large scale infrastructure projects intrinsically understood by the public, in terms of its relative physical footprint. As a result, SFO enjoys a correspondingly more prominent place in the public’s spatial memory, compared to the aforementioned Port of Oakland and regional oil refineries. This is in direct correlation to greater general access to the airport, as well as the ability for passengers to see its full physical extent during takeoff and landing.

Similar to the public’s understanding of the physical presence of SFO, there too is a familiarity with the scope of the region’s large scale highway and bridge systems.

Given the expanse of the body of water that is the San Francisco Bay, the resulting bridges that link the various margins are both world-famous and heavily used on a daily basis by local commuters. The Golden Gate Bridge requires no introduction, given its historical stature. The same can be said of the Bay Bridge, much beloved by the region’s residents, and more prominently located in relation to San Francisco’s urban core.

The highway infrastructure around the Bay serves a regionally significant area, and is more varied that what is at first suggested by the aforementioned iconic bridges. There are literally dozens of smaller scale bridges, viaducts, overpasses and highway junctions that overlap the area’s undulating geography. This intricately woven web of roadways becomes particularly apparent at 2000 feet, doting the observer with a broader understanding of the interconnected nature of the communities around the Bay.

San Francisco does not acknowledge its industry-heavy, automobile-prominent, petroleum-thirsty side with much relish. It leaves the notoriety of the car-city to the other major Californian Metropolis down south, to the detriment of efforts to solve its own problems of congestion and smog. In the land of banned plastic shopping bags, Critical Mass bicycle movement, “locavores”, and one of the highest household recycling rates in the US, it is easy to gloss over the prominence of the Bay Area’s industrial legacy and associated environmental challenges.

At 2000 feet certain things are more apparent.

Text and photos by Eddy Joaquim / Magnesium Photos. Cross-posted at f-stopped