About Fovea
As the world of photography draws closer to becoming exclusively digital, it is always pleasant to remember the world of Diana cameras from the 1960s. Pre-Holga, pre-Lomo, these cameras captured a world that was fuzzy, blurry, and astigmatic. A world that now seems to have vanished—or has it?
As of late, the cameras themselves have made a significant resurgence with a generation that longs to explore a perspective that contrasts the sharp, technical viewpoint of modern digital cameras today. In their own day, the Dianas offered a nostalgic return to the romanticism of the early Pictorialists. Shortly after their release, the photographic world veered sharply to the f64 school, pristine landscapes, and crisp objectiveness of photo-journalism. But now a new generation seems to be recycling and revisiting the retro-technology of the Diana, and purchasing them with the bills in their wallet rather than going into sub-prime credit card debt.
Since picking up my first Diana in the 1970s, the plastic lens (when it hasn’t fallen off), has always been a perfect accompaniment to my work with a Hasselblad Superwide SWC, or currently with my Canon 5D Mark 2. With the Hasselbad, I was able to use the same film for a different purpose. It was a left brain/right brain complement. The Diana offered images that captured mood and environment in a way that could not be captured by the perfection of the Hasselblad optics. With the Diana, I could walk out into a salt water environment, be up to my chest in the water, and easily capture nostalgic, metaphorical, and romantic images that more high tech equipment would not allow.
After 30 years of being a Diana devotee, my eyes tire, my focus is a little slower, and my memory is not unlike my vision. Perhaps this is the world I would like to inhabit—a world not unlike that of the Diana. I recently went back to New York to revisit my old neighborhood and I found that my Canon couldn’t adequately capture the second story window where I used to shout to my mother to throw down 15 cents (wrapped in a tissue) for the ice cream truck coming by on a hot summer day. With the Diana, that window seems pregnant with opportunity and history—never static.
It is sweet to see a new generation rediscovering a tool I have loved for half my lifetime. Now I only hope that film will still be available for a few more years so the Diana can continue to capture a distinctly different, not better or worse, but different, point of view.