From Polaroid to Hasselblad
Only nine days from the beginning of this month, I have purchased two good and inspiring book about photography.
I can tell you that it’s hard and rare to find a good photography book in Bandung unless you buy it somewhere online.
One thing I noticed is the price. Why the bookstores here have to put such a high price tag? Do we also have to pay the shipping cost? One book was on a 50% sale only for me to discover similar price on the book’s website. The other book was on a crazy 85% sale only to match the book’s price on Amazon.
So my tip for buying book in Bandung is to check the price on the online store first. Convert it to IDR and you will have a pretty good idea about the price of a book.
The first book is the Polaroid Book.
I love Polaroid. And if you like it as I do, you will also love this book. Even if you can find plenty resources on the internet, seeing it on print is an enjoyable experience. I also like the story of the creation of Polaroid. How Edwin H. Land met Ansel Adams and how both of them further improving the design of this camera. And after reading (I’m not sure if it can be categorized as reading since most of the 400 pages are images – good Polaroid images) the book, I can only say, “I want one just like that” even if here – in Bandung – Polaroid is losing its popularity rapidly.
Today I went to a local photo supply store looking for a Polaroid camera. The answer came quite shocking to me as the owner firmly stated that they don’t sell Polaroid cameras anymore since there is no Polaroid films available. And I can only guessed that the films becoming rare due to the lack of demand. Here in Bandung, Polaroid is considered only as the camera used by “tukang foto keliling” – people who usually hang around some tourist destination area selling their photographic services of taking tourists’ photos for a quite cheap price. From now on, I might have to start looking for Polaroid cameras and films on eBay.
Second book is the Paris Vertical by Horst Hamann.
I have seen New York Vertical before and I love it and I bought Paris Vertical believing that I will also love it. And yes, I love seeing every single black and white photo finely printed on quite a big book (12.9 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches). And if some of you curious about the camera he used, it’s a Hasselblad XPan. What is it with Hasselblad that stuns us? Anyway, I knew about XPan through Gladiarama and now this book and put it on my cameras wish list. Just like what Hasselblad put on the first page of its brochure, this is the perfect camera “for a world less square”.
On the end of this book, Horst Hamann wrote a page titled “Paris Is Not Vertical”. He told us what people said to him. That Paris is not a vertical city. Perhaps those people thought that there are not enough vertical building in Paris to make it into a book, perhaps compared to New York. And how the photographer also evolved in his journey on how to see things.
“In short: my vertical photography was transformed into a kind of vertical view of taking photos, with the entire spectrum of perception and experience that goes along with it. I am now guided to a much greater extent by vertical composition than by vertical objects. Seen in this way, I can confirm what others have told me all along: Paris is not a vertical city. The bustling people, however, the long shadows, the narrow alleyways, the slender statues, the steep stairways, the pointed towers of churches, and yes, even the baguettes and the high heels of French women – all of them raise an alarm on my vertical radar screen.
If you pay attention, you can see that the world we live in is indeed vertical in many different ways.
In the end of today, after reading these two books, I just can’t wait to get my camera and start taking pictures. I believe this kind of books intended to get your inspired more and more, over and over again. The most naive idea of all is to make a Bandung Vertical project.
I also ended up wanting to have the two unique cameras, a Polaroid SX-70 and a Hasselblad XPan!