midnight sun.

 

nymph.

 

await.

 

Toy Camera…RIP?

Toybox One.

Toybox Two.

People who follow my work have probably noticed the absence of any new “Toycamera” images in recent months. There’s reason for that, which has more to do with fiscal/logistical realities than creativity. The truth is my local black-and-white lab ceased operations at the end of ’06, leaving me without a reasonable way of processing and printing my toycamera images. I have to confess that even before this happened, I’d been tapering off on this part of my work, mostly due to the time and expense involved. I use a particular type of film in my toycameras [Ilford 3200 Delta 120] that’s unavailable in my area, making it necessary to order from NYC boxhouses. While there’s nothing wrong with that, the fact that the Ilford has been in corporate flux itself the last year or so has me thinking that the film might not even be on the market much longer. Ironically, I was considering investing in a large stock of the film in event that Ilford finally went under when my lab when under first – leaving me with about 20 undeveloped rolls of film sitting in my desk drawer. In a weird way, I was kind of relieved, since each roll of film costs me about $15 to get processed and proofed – without any kind of guarantee that a roll will have anything useful on it. When I think about how much I’ve spent on this part of my work, I wonder what else I could have bought with that money…though I have no regrets about working in this particular medium.

To be honest, I haven’t missed the toycamera aspect as much as I thought I would. I carry fewer cameras with me on the road now and spend a lot less money on film/processing [the 35mm black and white I use is much cheaper to deal with]. The energy I used to spend on keeping track of which toy to use in what situation is now used on refining the actual shooting/posing/lighting of the scene I’m dealing with, as well as a new concentration of creating possibilities for diptychs and other multiple image concepts that I’m enjoying and people really seem to like a lot. Basically I’ve just channeled the energy into a different creative avenue while saving myself considerable expense and time spent scanning/retouching proofs.

So what about all this toycamera work? Well in deference to my newfound love of collective/sequential imagery, I decided to come up with a series of “tribute” pieces, the first of which you see here. The title “Toybox” pretty much chose itself. It’s been quite fun digging through my archives to find older, less well-known toycamera pieces to include in the series, and I’ve even surprised myself with the things I’ve found that I didn’t pay attention to when they were new. So far there are 8 pieces in the “Toybox” series, with a few more possibly on the way. These first two will be my entries in the Dark Visions group show in Toldeo next month, so stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, anyone who has black-and-white processing capability and wants to help out a fellow artist, drop me a line…