Rollei-ing Back the Years

It’s been a while since I made any pictures with my Rolleiflex 3.5F. I took it to Italy with me a while back, on a pilgrimage to see the career-spanning Guido Guidi show at Maxxi, and made some pleasing images which I later exhibited in a friend’s gallery.* Since then, I’ve turned my attention to other cameras, like the Olympus Pen FT.†

I find that picking up a different camera (I’ve collected a few over the years) forces me to see things in a new way. I’m not bothered about consistency or coherence. I have the luxury of not having to worry about maintaining a ‘practice’ or making a living from my pictures. The thing I love about photography isn’t social media marketing or gear reviews. I like walking, looking and making photographs, and I find that doing this with a beautifully engineered machine gives me great joy.‡

A couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready to go out for the day and instinctively picked up the Rollei. It’s easy to carry around and has a built-in light meter. I enjoy looking down into the waist level finder and the square format, a nice change from 35mm half frame photography.

Here are a few of the pictures I’ve made with it in the last week or so, shot on Kodak Ektar 100 and Ilford XP2. The light has been good and there’s nothing better, in my view, than wandering about with no particular direction in mind, listening to a good book and letting my eyes do the work.§

I’m not a premeditative photographer. I see a picture and I make it. If I had a chance, I’d be out shooting all the time. You don’t have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at you.

— Lee Friedlander

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* https://photopedagogy.ghost.io/stillest-things/

† I’ve written before about how much I love diptychs and, in particular, those created by my Olympus Pen FT half frame camera. A half frame camera makes a lot of sense in a world of rising film prices. Seventy-two pictures from a roll of thirty-six. Pentax released

‡ I don’t have many vices but collecting different types of mechanical cameras is definitely one of them. I’m not anti-digital photography. The best camera is the one you have with you, after all. I use my iPhone all the time. It’s just the feeling of using an old camera that floats my boat. Hard to explain and, fortunately, I only have myself to please. My Rolleiflex was made in 1968 so it’s only a couple of years younger than me.

§ I am in the habit of listening to an audiobook while I wander aimlessly through the city. This might suggest that I am not fully ‘present’ or sufficiently ‘mindful’. However, my experience is that listening to a book distracts the words part of my brain so that my eyes are liberated to do what they want. Consequently, I don’t overthink the instinctive looking business or critique my decision to make a picture. I trust my eyes and take the shot.