ANALOG CAMERA ZENIT 12XP TEST SHOOT

Warsaw, July 2, 2010

   One of the most widespread opinions about creativity says that the final effect is more important than the tools used. The supremacy of the product of the creative process over the tools used to create it places it in the heavenly sphere, detached from our vale of tears here. Thus, in this case, there can be no question of artistic creation (if the thesis chosen here is accepted as true), because the tool, to a large extent, defined the effect. I sort of let myself be led by the hand to see what would happen.

   Back in the day, when I began to show an interest in photography beyond just snapping friends at parties, I was given some very valuable advice: buy a zenith. So I did (actually, I got a 20-year-old copy with zero mileage, marked with the symbol 12 XP, from my uncle). The school I learned from the over two-year adventure with this camera turned out to be invaluable. Frame saving is a term unfamiliar to most digital camera owners (they take an average of 1,000 photos at a get-together with friends, then, a year later, discover that their hard drive now, oddly enough, won't fit a text file). I happened to have frames from holidays and winter holidays on one film. The list of charms about working on this machine is long. The protruding frontal bone bore traces of a metal sled from a flash. Before I could focus on the impossibly dark focusing screen, my eye emitted half a liter of the tear film (not to mention a seventy-year-old woman with a chick long gone over the horizon).

     I exposed my first film while hitchhiking around Romania. Unfortunately, these supposedly wonderful frames have never been seen by the human eye, because I have not yet been able to roll the film in this tank among the cameras. However, this did not discourage me from further attempts. The results were the greatest reward for hard work. Colorful photos (I was working only on color films at the time) of flowers, bugs, dogs, and kitties in a shallow depth of field pleased the heart, like candy they please a little kid. In addition, having a heavy, angular piece of metal with me, I was not afraid of the nooks and crannies of Mława's Wólka or Warsaw's Praga. Besides, a potential thug wouldn't pose much of a threat - he would probably have to have a vision defect of 7 diopters to fawn over this museum exhibit. Trying to practice journalistic photography, I was notoriously exposed by the slamming of the mirror and the click of the shutter, reminiscent of the sound of slamming a window in a train car.

   All these limitations did not discourage me, but they toughened me up, laying the foundations for further development in photography. Here is the first, eclectic edition of the collection that I owe to this spirit enchanted in the Soviet photographic machine.

Here are a few snaps from that fine day