Learning with Lomography: Spazio Labò Students and the Diana F+ - Part 1

From Bologna to Bandung, London to Shanghai – we have collaborated with universities and schools all over the world to give creative students the chance to enjoy their own Lomographic experiences. Through this series we see how the students brought their artistic visions to life with the help of a range of Lomography tools.

Today we’re in Bologna for a very special collaboration between Spazio Labo' and Lomography. Inspired by Franco Vaccari's essay, Photography and Technological Unconsciousness , in which the author invites reflection on photographic tools and the meaning of photography in contemporary society, the participants were invited to develop a project using Diana F+ medium format cameras, Lomography film and the DigitaLIZA Max scanning kit. In this article we meet some of the participants and take a look at their wonderful work.

Berta Aguilar

Hi, I'm Berta Aguilar and I was born in Barcelona, ​​Spain. I arrived in Italy four years ago to do Erasmus and finish my degree in Bologna. After finishing my degree in Visual Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, I experimented with analogue photography, especially in lab development.

The Diana F+ is very light to carry around. I found it very good because it gave me so many shooting possibilities, and also for experimentation. Being able to use the pinhole, flash with various filters or double exposure gave me a lot of freedom.

In this series I went all the way around the Colosseum, with the aim of capturing its large architectural structure in a panoramic photo. Hence the name of the series "Girotondo" (roundabout). I started with the idea of ​​constructing a single image, using film in panoramic format, taking advantage of the possibilities that the Diana F+ gives you to take shots freely, even using double exposure. It was a big feat, as I couldn't see the result until the end of the development and post-production. It was a long but beautiful process and one that I would like to experience more.

I'm actually looking forward to experimenting with the camera and seeing how far I can go. As I said before, it has many possibilities, but always with little control, so it also plays with trial and error, which is something interesting for me.

Ettore Giammatteo

Greetings to all readers. I am 37 years old, but soon, alas, I will be 38. I am originally from the province of Avellino and I moved to Bologna in 2016 for work. When I go out I always take a camera with me, of all things taking pictures is the thing that fascinates me the most.

At Spazio Labò I attended two annual evening courses in order to be able to fit them with the work: the technical course and the design course, which allowed me to acquire greater awareness and understanding of the photographic language. Now my path is directed towards the development of personal works. The topics I like to address are intimacy, and in general the telling of stories.

The Diana F+ was a wonderful discovery. Shooting in analogue allows me to get deeply in touch with what I'm doing. With this camera I had the feeling of being even more so, of enjoying the shooting phase and not just the result, as happens when I shoot digitally. Using the Diana F+ was extremely fun, I felt like I was "surfing" between the feeling of having everything under control and the unpredictability of what could have happened in the development phase. I also appreciated the speed of photo acquisition of the scanner and being able to immediately acquire the images on the mobile phone.

The idea was to have portraits of people who have just woken up to match the photos of their dreams. I took these portraits in the morning, after which I asked each person I met to tell me the dream they had the previous night. Later I also staged the dream with another shot. The title of the series is “At six in the morning.” The portraits are the results of encounters, of relationships. Shooting this series I was able to meet people and get intimate with them, because I was at their house, in the early hours of the day, upon waking up, while they were still in their pajamas. People then had to open up to me further to tell me what they had been dreaming about. It was beautiful, funny, and even a little poetic.

To give the photos a dreamlike touch and to get a more blurred image, I used long exposure times freehand with the pinhole. Some photos required exposure times of 15 minutes!

In the morning people all offered me coffee. Here, I met seven different people and I drank a different coffee every time: American, Turkish, Neapolitan, espresso with a classic moka, espresso with an induction moka, pods and capsules. I made up for the flash in my subject’s faces in the early morning by bringing a croissant, or then offering a few beers.

Alessandra Neri

I'm Alessandra Neri, originally from a small mountain village in the Bolognese Apennines, Camugnano, in the province of Bologna.

My journey into the world of photography begins when I was little, I was a lover of family albums, both to create and to browse through them, and over the years I have tried to experiment with various photographic means and techniques, accompanied by courses and artistic paths to learn more about how to be able to express my ideas and sensations through photography.

Spazio Labò has always been a place that has helped me grow photographically. I started attending Spazio Labò over 10 years ago with a course in digital photography, and then continued to take courses in artistic design with Silvia Camporesi and subsequently, in recent years, the path of analogue photography. I had been using Lomography camerass for some time and I approached analogue courses to learn how to develop rolls and print negatives, in order to have maximum freedom and decision on the final product.

I really appreciated the versatility of the Diana, as it is a camera with which you can make almost anything, it is very creative! Moreover, Color Negative film allow you to have a palette of colors that make each shot unique, leaving the unpredictability of what can come out of it. Not having everything under control is what I love most about these products.

The project I developed for this call entitled "5 pm" was conceived starting from Franco Vaccari's concept of the technological unconscious. I've always been fascinated by his exhibitions in real time, and the theme proposed in the call was perfect for being able to create a project based on real-time creation. Every day at the same time, 5 pm, a photograph, regardless of the place, actions, at that moment I took the photograph so that at the end of the days corresponding to the number of shots the project had taken shape. This series was born from the concept of not manipulating photography by creating the best situation or composition, but leaving it to the randomness of time and the potential of the camera to record a given moment.

With this project I have not experimented with particular techniques as I have used the machine as a pure recording medium, to enhance the theme developed. In the next works I will surely use double exposures and possibly the pinhole mode, a very interesting element.

Thank you to Berta, Ettore and Alessandra for sharing their work with us. You can find out more about Spazio Labo' on their website.

written by alexgray on 2023-08-13 #gear #culture #community #italy #diana-f #digitaliza-max #spazio-labo #lomography-at-art-school #learning-with-lomography