Feng Li – ‘White Night’

Feng Li’s White Night is the result of 10 years spent roaming the streets of Chengdu, China. Mostly flash-lit, with an unsettling/nauseating green cast to most of the photos, grinning faces of awkward people and pretty people in awkward situations, it’s a collection of the absurd, filled with visual jokes, puns, and juxtapositions.

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Anouck Durand – ‘Eternal Friendship’

Eternal Friendship is an incredible work of archival research and historical reimagining. In it, Anouck Durand tells the story of Refik Veseli, an Albanian State Photographer during the reign of Enver Hoxja, and a secret state-sponsored trip to China he took with some colleagues to study a special color photography process. It’s something like a comic book, with archival photography used in place of drawings, and it’s really an amazing work.

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Enter the Kodak Brownie Reflex Synchro

This Kodak Brownie Reflex Synchro came to me in a basket full of Brownies, courtesy of a generous coworker. Actually, this Brownie Reflex Synchro came in two parts, or, rather, it took two Brownie Reflex Synchros from that basket to make one functional one, but it was easy to work on. In fact, I did all the repairs/exchanges with a small Swiss Army knife with the slot screwdriver bit on it…

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1970s Ricoh Compacts, part 5 – the Ricoh 500 GX

The Ricoh 500 GX was the last of the Ricoh 500 series to be made in Japan. It’s pretty much a 500 G, with the addition of a multiple exposure switch, battery check button, shutter lock, and little flags that indicate when loaded film and a cocked shutter. In theory, it’s the best of the whole line, and I had high hopes for it.

How did this spur-of-the-moment acquisition work out for me? Read on…

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