The Wall

I'm always on the lookout for great photo/art displays and the last time my mother was here, we wandered around downtown and found ourselves in the Kate Spade Soho store. Forget the bags, I said, take a look at that wonderful grouping of artwork on the back wall! I love the seemingly disjointed variety of work - it all goes seamlessly together, despite the fact that there isn't a unifying theme like identical frames. Luckily, the folks over at Apartment Therapy wrote a little blurb about how and why this arrangement works. You can check it out here.

Photo by Apartment Therapy.

Artist: Agnes Barley (bottom right)

New Project: Old Cameras Part II

The next camera that I took out and dusted off for the Old Camera Project is the Polaroid Automatic 100 Land Camera, a folding rangefinder. It's been sitting on a shelf for at least seven years. I can't actually remember where I got it - but it may have been at an estate sale. I purchased a new 4.5v battery off of eBay and went to Adorama yesterday for some Fuji FP-100C instant film. I was skeptical about the camera working but at under $20 for the battery and film together, it wasn't an expensive commitment. Once I jammed the battery in (the battery is larger than the original) the shutter appeared to be working but the whole operation was so quiet it didn't seem like anything was actually happening. I took it out, aimed it at my lovely two neighbors, depressed the shutter and . . . nothing. The photo was completely black. I then adjusted the ISO (the film is 100 and the camera does not have an ISO 100 option) and ran outside to take a photo of anything nearby. I was pretty thrilled to get an image, any image. Here are the results:

Next up is the Agfa Isolette. It was my grandfather Jack's camera.

From the Archives

I shot these in 2000 of an old friend of mine. He recently had the whole lot painstakingly scanned. This my favorite.