If you think you can just throw some film in a cheap camera, shoot around awhile, and come up with Girls Blue or Hiromix, think again. I knew I couldn’t, knew it would take much more than 2 rolls, and if I really want to try, I need to keep at it for a year or so, amass something like the 30,000 negatives Hiromix reportedly* sifted through for Girls Blue. But, stunned by my near complete failure, I haven’t kept up with it, though if I want to get there, I really need to keep going…
Anyway. Rather than share individual pictures or groups, I thought I’d try a sequence… Apologies in advance.
Just for grins, I threw these into Affinity Publisher and tossed off a quick pdf.** It took a bit of shenanigans to get it printed but it actually sorta almost maybe kinda works… Feel free to download and print if you want. It will take 4 US Letter-sized pages, printed front and back, folded in half on the short side and stapled if you want. I even trimmed off the excess, though I didn’t set up the file to gradually increase the bleed or otherwise account for after-print trimming. Oh well.
I had nearly as much fun making the zine as I did making the pictures, and I need to do this more often. (Don’t hold your breath.) I also need to keep shooting, and I might change from the LC-A to the Olympus Infinity II. Between the weatherproofing and the autofocus and the flash, I think it’s probably closer to the Konica Big Mini that Hiromix used back in the 1990s, not that it matters, really. As a 43-year old (at time of writing) white man in the United States, I’m never going to make anything that looks anything like Girls Blue or Hiromix, but maybe I can make something personal and diaristic and somehow meaningful or interesting… maybe.
And, again, don’t hold your breath.
*I hate to link to Philbert Ono here, but his disgustingly and disturbingly misogynist review is the only one I’ve seen that reports this count.
**By “quick,” here, I mean “watched 2 videos and read a couple of how-to articles…”
