The Holga Diaries II is a raw and gritty double take of the urban landscapes and city streets of Europe as viewed by artist Lucia Fischer through the lens of her Holga camera. Captured on vagabond wanderings and travels, this body of work presents a series of hazy and desolate dreamscapes that evoke a sentimentality of times past and whose nostalgic presentation can be best described as hazy, dark and silent.
This second series on subjective documentation of urban environments, is an extension of her first Holga Diaries series. Compiled together from images brought back from my recent trip to Europe, the artist explains her visual story as:
"Travels seen through the eye of my holga camera. Holga the vagabond in Prague looking for the grit and grime of times past. The drifter in Vienna walking the cobblestone streets worn down by the characters of history. The wanderer in Venice tracing the gondola filled canals. The rogue in Hamburg listening to the melodies of the ages."
Holga is the brand name of my camera, a cheap plastic toy intended for mass market snap happy photography. It was originally a novelty item I purchased once on a trigger happy ebay night but later he grew to become my constant companion. For the past three years he has lived in my handbag, I take him to the beach, he comes out drinking, he gets dropped, he gets wet, he is a little rickety and sometimes he even pops open and splits in two. He is prone to light leaks, vignetting, blur and perspective distortion and it is these elements of chance and mishap that attract me to him. Because it is these raw and imperfect qualities that create expression beyond artist intent and allow for the intervention of fate and the image in its own action.
This will be Lucia’s third solo exhibition and will show a series of limited edition framed photographic prints. The exhibition will open at aMBUSH Gallery, 4A James Street, Waterloo (Sydney) on Friday the 9th of April 2010 at 6:00pm and continue Wednesday to Saturday from 12pm to 4pm until April 18th 2010.