"You don't just say, Well, see you around sometime, bye."

For Lexi. (And my literary journalism class)


“Serendipitous.”

The breathless rhythm of the message ends in one word: serendipitous.

“How could it happen that I would find that little piece before it was broken beyond recognition? Or swept away by the street cleaners? Or washed down the gutters by the rain? Holgas are not that common at all. That I happened to stumble upon the one piece of Holga in Paris is incredible,” she wrote, in the same breathless tone.
For Lexi Trauger, the moment truly was serendipitous.

It brought her back to that freezing January day, eight months earlier, when she had first encountered the Holga camera amongst the strange plethora of toy cameras lining the back walls of an Urban Outfitters store. She’d never heard of a Holga before, and the bright, bold letters on the outside of the box, which proclaimed: “The World Through a Plastic Lens” were a little strange to her. “Sixty dollars for a little plastic camera?” she had puzzled. “And wasn’t film photography a dying art?”

But the Holga was so much more than that, the friend who was shopping with her had gushed. The nature of the camera’s plastic lens often creates images featuring blur, extraneous streaks of light, vignetting (the unintentional darkening of an image around its edges), and other distortions. The Holga even has a built in color flash – also plastic – that emits a tiny burst of red, blue, yellow, or white light, further adding to the surrealism of Holga photographs. The aesthetic of these images, Lexi’s friend told her, have made Holga the instrument of choice for an entire sub-culture of photographers. They call themselves lomographers, and their art, lomography. They live by the Kodak-inspired mantra: “Don’t think, just shoot,” and they rely wholeheartedly on the uniqueness only a toy camera image can provide to convey the spontaneity of everyday life in a way that pays no mind – defies even – the formal elements and precision that are so highly valued in digital imaging.

Her friend’s excitement spread to Lexi like wildfire, and approximately one week later, a brown box bearing the Amazon company logo arrived at Lexi’s Minneapolis apartment. The Holga inside, which has since documented many an adventure with Lexi, would now be the lomographer’s dearest companion as she immersed herself in Paris for the 2008-2009 school year.

On the first Monday morning in September, while her friends back at the University of Minnesota are going about their routines in and around campus, Lexi sleeps in. She awakens in the late hours of the morning to the sun slanting through her window, illuminating the desk that stands in the corner of her tiny upstairs bedroom. Her eyes flutter at the sudden onslaught of sunlight, and then pause to rest on the empty film cases strewn about the desk surface. Accompanying them is an ever-growing pile of film just waiting to be processed, and an ever-dwindling pile of yellow Kodak boxes which she eagerly – though against her better judgment – exchanged for her last two paychecks before leaving the states. The sight of them stirs within Lexi the excitement that she constantly squanders as she walk amongst Parisians, feigning the bored expressions they carry as they go about their own daily business (she would hate being labeled as yet another enamored tourist) and collecting on film (discreetly, of course) those images that would always bring her back to Paris when her memories begin to swirl and fade like scenes outside a speeding metro window.

“I’m in Paris! You’re in Paris! We’re in Paris.”

A tiny, junky piece of plastic, placed tenderly on the shelf by Lexi’s bed, stands in memoriam of the previous day’s events. On that day, which was a Sunday, Lexi had met up with a friend in her study abroad program so the two could explore the city together. The weather was sunny with a touch of wind, the perfect day for a long-sleeved shirt and a very French scarf – the perfect day for photographing. But as the skinny streets of Paris go in every direction, hours later, lost and confused, feet throbbing from walking so long, the two friends found themselves forced to abandon any plans they might have had. In those hours, the childhood terror of being lost had seeped through Lexi’s very skin, bringing with it a longing to be carried away from the beloved sights and smells of Paris and back to the safety of her apartment. Anxiety welled within her chest, threatening to swallow her whole, when she spied between the crevices of the cobblestone street a tiny piece of Holga. It was a piece to connect the batteries to the flash. Lexi recognized it instantaneously and hurried to rescue it from its graveyard in the streets.

Serendipitous.

Since she arrived in Paris, all Lexi has dreamt of is the metro – checking the map, finding the line she needs, the direction she needs, the stop she needs. Then transferring to the next line, the next direction, and the next stop, over and over as she fights to keep her balance. The smells of hot charcoal and the sweat of everyone around her, which only grow stronger with each opening and closing of the subway doors, surround her, and the alarm that sounds to warn passengers of departure rings through every crevice of her brain. Her eyes strain under the feverish flickering of lights, and she can feel the heat outside clashing with the wind that blows through the windows and in the tunnels. She reads the same ads again and again, climbs and descends the same stairs, runs her ticket through the same readers, and works her way through the always unfamiliar crowd, praying she doesn’t get stuck in the turnstiles. Even in sleep, the same overwhelming anxiety threatens to devour her again and again, night after night, causing a nagging, plaguing longing to be home, where she is surrounded by friends who love her and a place as constant and familiar as her own steady breathing.

More often than not, so are her nights as well as her days.

But not with Holga. When she found the piece, Lexi knew it was silly to be excited over something so utterly worthless. The lifespan of a Holga flash is never long, and the cost to fix it is more than the camera is worth. Her own Holga’s amazing four-color flash had expelled its final burst of light only a few blissful weeks after Lexi had torn into its box. She laughed aloud at the irony. Underneath that laugh, Lexi had felt “like some greater force was intervening, reminding [her she] was on the right track.” With certainty she would write home later: “I [will] figure out which direction I need to go. I am supposed to be in Paris, it's the right thing to do. [The piece] was an encrypted glimmer of hope meant only for me.” In the midst of creeping doubts and fears, the Holga piece brought not only a sense of reassurance and belonging, but the energy she needed to make it through the harrowing metro ride back. And even more, the Holga piece reminded Lexi of the home that would always be waiting for her as she pursues crazy photo adventures and fulfills her dreams of Paris.

For Lexi, Holga lomography is “wonderful… a mix of no thinking at all and constantly thinking about everything.” She loses herself in the setting up of a shot and the subsequent clicking of a shutter. From the lighting of the scene, to which type of film to use, to the distance between Lexi and her subject, life behind the plastic lens leaves little room for her to focus on anything else. It grabs the nuances from the world around her and exposes them, preserves them. It allows a second glance into the funny, the interesting, the unique beneath the surface. The serendipity of finding the piece of Holga is “what lomography is all about. [It’s about] finding the extraordinary in the very very ordinary, having chance encounters, capturing something that lasts only a moment, shedding new light on something old, turning something banal into something magical.” The piece is her greatest souvenir so far – “free, dirty, broken, worthless, special. Holga.”

Before leaving her apartment on any given morning, Lexi grabs three rolls of film off her desk and loads them into her purse. Like any great lomographer, she knows that such over-preparedness will save her from the agony of missing that one photo-op that would inevitably occur on the day she is fresh out of film. After checking that her Holga is nestled safely next to the rolls of film, she makes her way towards the kitchen, determined to cook a successful Parisian breakfast that will carry her through another day of her new life – another day of crowded metros and snapping shutters and endlessly sore feet. “Like learning to play guitar, I’m learning how to get around Paris,” she wrote in another letter, “French women must be made of steel.”

As she will soon be, she hopes.