Film Is A Wonder: LomoAmigo Adam Goldberg

Maybe you know Adam Goldberg the actor, director, or musician (“The Goldberg Sisters”), but do you know him as a photographer? Working as an actor, according to Adam, is just that: work. Read in-depth about how his interest in shooting film grew and then waned as the digital era came about in the early 2000’s but sparked again several years later. The changing landscape of instant materials even lead him to try out the Lomo'Instant Wide, with which he shot all of the photos included here.

Have you always shot film?

Well….in the sense that I’ve been shooting film since there was no alternative, back in the olden days. Around the time digital started to make the scene I dabbled with some early digital cameras but as long as film, film labs, and Polaroid was still readily available I shot film. Integral Polaroid was the iPhone of its day. Sounds like sacrilege but it really is a perfect analogy. Although eventually I would start to dabble with multiple exposures with my first Pro Pack camera in the late ‘90s, prior to that and up until the discontinuation pretty much, I would shoot the integral stuff like anybody else would — to document my life, just as we all do so with our phones today. At one point, for a few years, I switched to hardbound large format journals into which I’d stick a Polaroid, or several, nearly every day, as an adjunct to my written entries. For some reason, and I’m guessing having something to do with the advent of digital, I sort of lost my luster for photography in general in the mid ‘00s. I was shooting with a point and shoot digital for a while as well as with my phone—at one point going so far as to take a certain amount of pride in trying to take decent photos with my crappy Treo and using them to comprise the book of liner notes for my first record (then under the LANDy moniker).

Then all of a sudden, as if from some Rip Van Winkle sleep I rediscovered my old Pro Pack Polaroid, my Leica M6 that I had bought new in 2000, which had been sitting dormant for a couple years, my Rolleiflex I hadn’t really touched since I bought it while shooting Saving Private Ryan, last century in England (I got discouraged after my first rolls came back). And I woke up to discover the only instant film available to me was now on eBay..I bought film ravenously and began to expand my collection of analog gear — which has now reached embarrassing proportions. But I use almost all my gear regularly; it’s the one subject of my sort of hoarding issue with which I make constant practical use. My Mamiya Universal Press camera was sort of my gateway drug into larger format. It takes amazing 6×9, 6×7, and instant films, depending on which back you use.

Did you have any special mentors or teachers in particular?

I mean, not directly but there’s a community of photographers I follow and with whom I exchange ideas either literally or through osmosis. I became friends with a ridiculously talented photographer Ben Parks, through Flickr I think. Actually he and another Ben (Hinceman) were sort of my first two Tinder, er, Flickr “friends,” that became real life buddies and hung out with. On and on. I will look to Ben Parks often for technical advice and we will exchange photos, send each other eBay listings, etc. I really learned how to shoot, for instance my Speed Graphic, etc, by researching the wealth of material the internet has to offer. I guess the irony is that modern technology has enabled me to be fairly auto-didactic when it comes to analog photography. Of course there’s the work of those I admire.

I came to discover, for instance, while I was researching the Mamiya Universal, that William Eggleston shot its predecessor, the Mamiya Super 23, a bunch. So of course I had to pick one up (the only real difference between it and the Universal was that the 23 has small bellows for moments and doesn’t take a Polaroid back). Eventually iI would “stalk” Eggleston at a show he was having at the Larry Gagosian Gallery in Los Angles. He was in a wheelchair, flanked by admirers, and I was trepidatious about approaching him. I never, I mean never go up to people I admire, and I was really “starstruck” by him. But I made my way through and meekly….“Mr. Eggleston?”

He looked up slowly from his chair, “Yes?”

“Uh….Would you mind singing my Super 23?”

The Super 23 is basically a box with a lens and a back, and I had the silver one, so there’s a perfect place to sign with a black sharpie right on its top.

A smile forms on his elegant face, he reaches for the pen, a slow drawl, “Well, that’s a mighty fine camera. A mighty fine camera.”

I had won Eggleston over for a about 19 seconds. So there’s that. I shot a roll of Portra 800 with the camera of the show, including him, just prior to approaching him. A fitting last roll to shoot on that thing before I retired it— the one camera I won’t shoot again, graced by his signature, terrified it’s gonna come off.

What is your favorite aspect of shooting film?

I love the magic I guess? I suppose that’s cliche, but it’s a wonder, film. This becomes even more starkly the case when you develop it yourself, which recently I’ve come to do occasionally (after swearing I’d never go into a darkroom alone again, when as a 14 year old in the school darkroom I mixed some chemicals in such a way that I created something like smoke and ran out drenched in the stench of formaldehyde.)

I suppose digital is also a wonder but somehow I don’t feel the same or often anything when I shoot it. I suppose at least with digital film making there’s a feeling of wonder, disappointment, accomplishment, etc., when you go back and review footage. But when shooting digital stills one tends to view the results instantaneously and or even concurrently if they’re using live view, so there isn’t really even a nanosecond sometimes before the photo is revealed. Even with instant there is some waiting and anticipation.

But beyond this is the look. I don’t enjoy toiling for hours in Aperture, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. I love what some knowledge of film stocks and lighting and then also some lack of knowledge, can illicit — the sheer beauty that film stocks, from nearly grainless Velvia, to expired Polaroid, to my new absolute favorite 35mm (and soon 120/4×5) stock, CineStill, can offer. Right out of the box.

Also, and this has been said a lot, but it’s absolutely true in my experience. You take fewer photos. They’re more well considered, at least in my case. And invariably the ratio of “useable” photos to outtakes is much much smaller than it is when I shoot digital. Of course 4×5 and 8×10 cameras with “movements” epitomize the slow sometimes agonizing process of shooting even a single analog shot, but the results make this well worth it. And for that matter the process, when you don’t have to rush, can be meditative and a form of expression in a sense, in and of itself. It’s slightly ironic because with large format or view cameras with which you focus on the ground glass, there is a resemblance to the experience to composing with live view in a digital context. But again, there’s something about the fact that the image on the glass is “pure,” unfiltered in a way, that it is photography, in its its most primitive sense, like a camera obscura, which makes the experience…magic. That word again.

Do you have a favorite camera and why?

Ahhhh……well, I was thinking about this the other day. If my collection were pillaged what would be the one camera I couldn’t live without? Although the lenses are fussy, My Mamiya Universal, with 105mm 2.8f lens, as long as I could keep 6×9 and Polaroid backs, would have to be the one. Again, it’s sort of all things in a sense. It’s such a versatile, modular system, so simple in many ways, yet the results easily rival those I’ve gotten on “fancier” medium format cameras — Hasselblads, etc. Then there’s my Leica M6. That sort of changed the game for me —when I switched from my SLRs to that in 2000. I kind of fell in love all over again with photography. Even though there’s a kind of distance with rangefinders, you’re guessing or judging depth of field, rather than seeing it, and even the frame itself to a degree. But I’m a big rangefinder guy — the Mamiya Universal. M6, Plaubel 670.

But then there’s all the instant film cameras I shoot— or backs I use on, for instance, my Pentax 67, which I also think is one of the greatest systems of all time. Of course the SX-70 is a work of art. My Speed Graphic with Aero Ektar lens is my favorite 4×5….And for the last year I’ve been shooting tons with my Rollei 2.8f, which is I suppose my current favorite medium format camera. I had had a 3.5, that’s the one I got in England years ago, but it got damaged and I hesitated getting another because I just didn’t really see the point; I have a Hasselblad and use it primarily for instant and less than the Pentax…but the results I saw people getting and frankly the results I’ve been getting with it just astonish me. There’s a simplicity, elegance, purity to that camera I can’t put my finger on. And that lens — in my case the 2.8 Zeiss, there’s something, god I’m a one word pony….uh, magic about it.

What about instant photography in particular? How was the Lomo'Instant Wide as compared to your experience with Polaroid?

Well, again the instant gratification that clearly we all yearned for long before the advent of digital or phone photography, must play a huge role. And I guess it all depends what you’re using it for. I don’t do much in the way of “snapshots” on instant film anymore. It’s not that readily available for one thing and I certainly find having a phone camera is handy for that. But there’s something about holding that moment in your hand that will never be replaced by viewing it on a screen. I’m gonna contradict myself now….I’ve come to not feel it’s been fully “processed” however until I scan it and view it on a large screen, on my computer. My mentality has certainly shifted in that regard.

Of course it also depends on whether you’re shooting new stock, old stock, which stock….The results you get form expired 669 Polaroid — or even not very expired 669 (when that was the case) and the beautiful large format Polaroid stocks are unlike anything else. They are their own aesthetic and I’m partial to it.

I happen to really, and I’m frankly surprised by this, really like the Fuji Instant Wide stuff. It gets some really lovely blues, reds, purples. I had sort of written it off, but I also hadn’t experimented with it prior to the availability of the Lomo’Instant Wide, because I was waiting for a camera which could shoot that stuff and was capable of shooting multiple exposures and with which I would have a bit more creative control than other cameras that use it. It reminds me a lot of shooting with my old Pro Pack Polaroid camera, where you were guesstimating the focal distance but with which over time you could really begin to predict your results or were pleasantly surprised by the ones you couldn’t — and with which you could either use as a snapshot camera or be as inventive as your imagination would allow. I’m really impressed by it. And I am not a Lomo hostage! I’m saying this of my own volition folks!

How do you think photography relates to or enriches your creative practice as an actor? Or are they completely separate?

I think they’re pretty separate. Arguably they may even have a somewhat dissonant relationship. I don’t for instance like having my photo taken, or don’t like the results anyway. I think entertaining in front of the camera is a pretty different experience and it can be somewhat “dangerous” I’ve found — and this applies more to my having directed films — to know too much about what’s being shot and how, it can really remove you from the “moment. “ That’s very actor-ly of me to say.

I would liken my experience as a photographer more to mine as a director and music maker. In all three cases I am, for better or worse, composing, creating, responsible for the result. They are much more direct and deeper forms of expression and communication than my work as an actor, which is often just that — work. My photography no doubt has affected my eye as a filmmaker and vice versa. I have come to shoot stills much more “cinematically,” than certainly when I began shooting or shooting seriously. Often I like to tell a story, evoke an emotion, a mood, and above all express something of myself. These are all things I’m able to do as a photo taker and movie and music maker. And photography can be such an autonomous form of expression. There is nothing quite like the accessibility of, for instance, picking up a camera at midnight, meditating on a concept, and executing it in a matter of moments. My cameras are my fellow insomniacs.

geschrieben von Katherine Phipps am 2016-04-16 in #Menschen #lifestyle #instant #showcase #instant-photography #william-eggleston #lomoamigo #adam-goldberg #lomoinstant-wide #instantshowcase