Photographic curiosities
Kid camera, real art
The deep, surprising world of pinhole and toy cameras
By Cathalena E. Burch
cburch@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.11.2009
Mary Findysz has a soft spot for Mickey Mouse.
She's especially enamored of the Disney character's starring role as a toy camera called the Mick-A-Matic. You look through the viewfinder in his forehead, then pull down one ear — or, in later models, a lever between his ear and his eye — to snap a picture that is captured in the lens mounted in Mickey's nose.
So easy a child could do it, which was the intent of the Bronx, N.Y., manufacturer that introduced the cameras in the early 1970s.
So why would a respected professional photographer find a toy camera so fascinating?
"You can take this very simple tool in the hand of someone who knows what to do with it and create art," Findysz said recently, sitting in the modest loft conference room of her Photographic Works lab on East Grant Road, which also houses her 2-year-old ArtsEye Gallery.
The gallery's current exhibit, "Curious Camera: Pinhole and Plastic," was born of Findysz's curiosity over the years with plastic cameras.
In February she launched a national contest to find the best photographs shot with plastic and pinhole cameras.
The winners' works are on display in the first of what Findysz envisions will be a yearly exhibit. It continues through July 19 at ArtsEye, which takes up a big chunk of the first floor of the well-respected photo and fine-art printmaking lab that Findysz opened 22 years ago.
Findysz admitted she was shocked at the number of contest entries — 250 — she received, especially since the contest was advertised mostly by word of mouth through various pinhole and plastic camera enthusiast Web sites.
About half the entries were from the Tucson area, while the rest came from throughout the United States.
"I had no idea how many submissions I had gotten, and the quality was unbelievable," she said.
Two judges — both professional photographers — decided three winners.
Seventeen other entries received honorable mentions. Many of the images share a uniquely soft, dreamy look, including Frank Brinksley's pinhole image of a cow in a pen with its tongue sticking out. The photo earned an honorable mention.
Second-place winner Leslie Bastress' "Feet Like Fins" has an almost "Blair Witch" hue to it, with foggy shadows framing the image of a girl sitting on the ground with her toes pointed at a painful downward angle. Slightly fuzzy in the background is a cluster of naked trees.
Findysz has used the latest high-tech digital cameras but said there is a raw simplicity and beauty about the decidedly low-tech world of no-fuss plastic cameras. She compares it to the compact disc — it might be the latest technology, but it can't hold a candle, in her view, to a vinyl recording.
"You think differently when you shoot in this way," she said. "It's sort of liberating. It's a challenge to get what you want."
Findysz's Mick-A-Matic (mid-1970s) is among the vintage toy cameras on display. You'll also see a mint-condition Charlie the Tuna (1972) and a Donald Duck (1946).
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