It’s late at night and I am trolling the Internet looking for something cheap, a foreign born lovely that goes by the name Diana, Holga, Savoy, Lomo, or even the sweet American Brownie. NO, I am not talking mail order brides, but toy cameras.

I have a problem. Epic battles are being fought on eBay everyday for these cameras, and I have become one of the many casualties. I am addicted to the crappy plastic lenses, the limited focus, the sunny versus cloudy aperture setting, and the need to tape my camera up like a mummy to prevent light leaks …

A shot of Spiral Jetty using a Diana

Finding the cameras is only part of the rush; there is also limitless information available on how to modify them once I have them. I can turn them into pinholes, Polaroid, 35mm cameras, and so on. And let’s not forget film, filters, accessories, color flash and everything Lomography. Finally, I can exhibit the images for the world on myspace.com, flickr.com, and toycamera.com (just to name a few).

So what is a toy camera? It all begins with the legacy of the Diana, created in China in the 1960s. The Chinese were trying to create a camera for the everyman but weren’t sure which film should be used, so they created a cheap camera that used professional 120 films. The Diana became a fixture at state fairs and carnivals as cheap prizes. Many artists and photographers discovered them there, but their rise in popularity in America did not come until years after they were no longer being produced. What makes the Diana so popular? Like any other camera, the images it produces. The focus is soft because of the plastic lens, but because it barely covers the film plane, there is also a nice gradual vignette. Typically, whatever is in the center is in focus and the peripheries become very blurry. It mirrors our own vision in this way. The last thing that makes this camera so popular is a snowball effect: it gets more popular just by being so popular. People fight over original Dianas because they want the name. But no worries–you won’t have to spend tons of money to have such crappy effects. Thankfully, there are many clones that produce the same poor quality image–if not worse.

Image from a Diana

The clone that has become the most popular in art schools and has risen to the top of the toy camera food chain is the Holga. Built in China, the Holga first started showing up in the early ‘80s. It has several variations, including those with flash, those with color flash and even some with glass lenses. Some people even modify their Holgas so much they take sharp pictures, making them almost not crappy.

Holgas have found their real fan base on Lomography.com. Lomophiles will tell you that a Holga is a Lomo, but hard core Holgaphiles will say “up yours” to Lomo. Lomo is actually a reinvented Russian camera company that now specializes in the fab reintroduction of their cameras as well as Polaroids, Holgas and any other weird, specialized film camera they can get their hands on. They are definitely marketing to the 20-something crowd and create kits with cool packaging, cameras, film, accessories and initiation to the club at an inflated price. The Lomo Society is responsible for a large part of the growing popularity of toy cameras.

Image using a Holga

Toycamera.com has aided in the toy cameras ascendancy. The site has been around for many years as a non-competitive space for people who enjoy sharing their love of plastic cameras and the images they produce. People from around the world post galleries, modifications and have even participated in group collaborations. They have self-published a book, The Toycam Handbook, through Lulu.com, and a magazine, Light Leaks, that is published in Canada but edited right here in Ogden, Utah.

Back to my addiction… As a photographer, I find myself at odds with many local authorities who cannot believe I would waste film on a piece-of-junk camera. Actually, there are many local authorities who cannot believe I shoot film to begin with. I believe that an important part of the rise of the toy camera movement is digital photography. As the better cameras have become more affordable and therefore more predominant in photo classes everywhere, there had to be a natural backlash against the technology. Students, artists and hobbyists are putting down their digital SLRs and picking up their Holgas. By doing this they are relinquishing perfectly exposed images, sharpness and LCD screens. They are relearning how to look at their subject and how to lose control.

As an artist, I am reminded how important process is no matter what the medium. I find myself out in the field with three cameras strapped to my body: my Hasselblad, a Polaroid and one of my Holgas or Diana clones. I think these multiple formats represent how my brain is going to take in the information I see. So much of my own artwork is based on travel, and I think the way I photograph it is representative of my memories of the trip. The Polaroid is the short-term memory. Often, I don’t look at the developed Polaroid until much later and I won’t always remember what I was looking at. The Hasselblad is more representative of my long-term memory. The image is always sharp and–as long as I am paying attention–the exposure is good, and because the image is part of a sequence on a roll of film, I can more clearly place the subject. The images from my Holga or Diana cameras become my imagination around the events. They are soft, dreamlike and often reduce the image to shapes and colors. I often look at them and have no idea where they were taken or what they were, but they still retain some part of the memory for me.

I have found a support group for my addiction, a toy camera club founded by the Supervising Editor of Light Leaks Magazine, Steph Parke. We met through our dealer, David Ujifusa, owner of Howell’s Photographic on 200 South. If you are interested in falling down the rabbit hole with us, I will be teaching a class on toy cameras this June 11th through July 2nd at the Women’s Art Center and September 19th through October 3rd in the University of Utah’s Continuing Education Department. You can also join us once a month for meetings of the Salt Lake Toy Camera Club.

Amanda Moore’s work can be seen at http://www.movingtruewest.com

Amanda Moore