Seattle photographer Michelle Bates met her first Holga in 1991.  She was a recent college graduate with a degree in biology, a science-y kind of girl. In the summer she took photography classes at the Maine Photographic Workshops. That’s where she first used the Holga, a cheap, Chinese-made, large-format camera.

The Holga is basically a toy camera that photography instructors use to teach the non-technical side of photography. It costs about $20. It’s made of cheap plastic, has a spring for a shutter, and no other moving parts. Though seemingly there’s not much you can do with it aside from composing your image and clicking the shutter, Bates fell in love with the kind of art she could make with it.

In October 2006, after nearly 15 years using the Holga, Bates published Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity, a book that is at once a users manual, fact book and art book dedicated to toy plastic cameras, particularly the Holga. In late February, a show of her work opened at the Creative Center for Photography in Los Angeles. She will also be teaching photography workshops in Seattle on the Holga this upcoming April.

In the right hands, the Holga produces distinctive images. In Bates’s photographs, you immediately notice the contrast of light. The darks and whites seem eager to spring out of the frame, for a moment muting much of the actual picture. You can tell that Bates likes interlocking lines and surprising angles. Her compositions are intriguing and sharp.

However, her pictures are not crisp all the way through. The frame is wobbly, the actual image blurs towards the edges. The prints become indistinct and fade to black. That fading, called “vignetteing,” is intentional, but it is also a consequence of using the Holga.

The Holga sounded great to me. I know nothing about the technical side of photography. My simple digital camera has dozens of functions that scare me to the point that I squeal when I accidentally activate them. But Holgas are not all fun and games. The simplicity of taking a picture has a trade off: the frustration of the darkroom. Shooting with the Holga, Bates says, “requires more knowledge and diligence after shooting to make great prints. The negatives are usually terrible — either under- or over-exposed.” Careful work and technical ability is necessary to create artistic images out of the Holga, just as is needed with any camera.

The progression of Bates’s work reflects her own growing seriousness about the Holga as a tool for creating art. Her early work is whimsical, often capturing silly sculptures or amusement park rides. She shot things, she explains, that “the Holga seem[ed] to like and do well.” As much as she loves those early pictures, Bates eventually found the goofier subjects limiting. She wanted to create art that made it clear that she dictated the subject matter, not the Holga. The time she spent researching Plastic Cameras drove that decision home; many photographers using the Holga fell into the trap of letting the camera dictate the substance, and so for her, she says, “shooting carnivals is no longer unique or particularly interesting.” 

Bates’s newer work focuses on what she refers to as “urban environments.” Her subjects are less silly than in her early work, but her ability to seek out unexpected perspectives is still very much present. Her desire is to transcend the camera’s humble price and reputation by producing art that can stand without the disclaimer, “And — can you believe it? — it was shot with a Holga!”