Saturday, October 9, 2021

TEEN-AGED PREOCCUPATION WITH LENSLESS CAMERAS AND CHEMISTRY FROM ROCKLAND AND EDMUND'S SCIENTIFIC'S EVENUATING MY 'MOVE' TO POLAROID'S MAGIC FROM 'LAND' TO 'S-pecial effect-X'





photo taken with a homemade lensless 'shoebox' camera, with film that I made in a darkroom from paper and emulsion from Rockland Associates, when I was 14......all the 'pictures' were 'colored' with Marshall's colors that I ordered from Edmunds...The results were spooky....like those photos of ghosts and spirit beings that were popular during early 20th Century 'Seances'....In Jr. High School, I showed my collection of these eerie photos for a Science Project...not surprisingly, some kids thought the images were 'supernatural' and that I had 'captured', magically, spiritual beings' Just trickery.....but the photos got me an "E" for Eerie.....Soon afterwards that 'peel off' Polaroid, collapsable lens B/W Land Camera stuff came out..then a SX-70, like Andy Warhol's, which I still have, too.......no darkroom, no chemicals...and heard that one can get film for these ...from China, I'm sure...those 'instant' cameras were the 'smartphone cameras' of their era...and one could 'write' and 'draw' on some of their 'films' as they 'developed'.......