Martina Hache with the Lomo'Instant Wide

Martina Hache is a photographer and cinematographer from Madrid. She shares with us a series of black & white instant photographs shot with her Lomo'Instant Wide, part of an ongoing personal artistic project.

This is the continuation of a personal project in which I give my own vision of how I live, and I have lived through anxiety and depression. How I have coped with the feeling of a persistent loneliness, with feeling very small... not recognising yourself in anxiety attacks, harming yourself.

Almost every time that I have developed this project I have worked with the body, without personifying the model. I suppose that this is beacuse I am seeking to mould myself, how I feel. This time, I decided to work with my friend Jessica, she has been through processes very similar to my own.

I suppose that this is what has made it so that, this time, it's not so much about moulding myself, but moulding the two of us, the therapies, the anxyolitics, antidepressives, what we feel. This has made it go from a de-personified project into a necessity to mould Jessica, along with this, in part, also in order to get to know myself, confronting the change that we have suffered together, how we understand ourselves, how we look after ourselves, or how sometimes we don't have the stregth to do look after ourselves, how we sometimes ask for help without a voice, how sometimes, without intending to, we destroy ourselves.

I feel that our friendship is well represented in this converstaion. One day I called Jessica and it was something like this:

M: "Auntie, it's 6 in the evening and I don't feel like living today... Do you think that taking a sleeping pill now would be a bad idea? X says I shouldn't take that kind of stuff."

J: Can you buy a sleeping pill without a prescription? Mum, are you going downstairs? Buy me a sleeping pill and a beer."

Sometimes, I feel like I want to understand where all of this comes from, if it's been inside me since I was born, if it's my context... if it's been the many jerky guys, the bullying at school, or a self-demandingness taken too far... But as I am someone who isn't really much for words (at least not for well-said ones) I try to get to know myself through photography. Which is why here I mould ourself...

Thanks for your words of introduction. When did you discover the power of photography in helping to understand inner mechanisms for the first time?

I think there wasn't a specific when, it started to emerge as I took photos, and as I asked myself what it was I wanted to expres through them, to what point did I want to arrive, so that's how I decided to start with this, I met a lot of people who helped me and, little by little, this started taking shape and has morphed into what it is now.

Tell us more about your inspirations

I think I look for inspiration in the cinema, in directors like Ulrich Seidl, Michael Haneke or Yorgos Lanthimos, in their way of depicting things in such a raw, personal and narrative way, in a single plane they manage turn the world over you.. I also suppose that like everyone, whether indirectly or directly, we look for and/or find inspiration through pages like Pinterest or Instagram, and the people around us.

Why have you decided to use black & white film in this project?

I have been working on this project for some time, always using analogue film in black and white, from the very first moment until today it has always been one element more to express how I feel with this, how I see it...

Has working with an instant camera affected your photography style in any way?

The truth is that it has been perfect for this session, as I have already said in the text, it's the first time that I attempt to mould someone, Jessica is not a photographer, nor a professional model, and both of us wanted to express something in common, so the polaroid has made it easier to see the photos in the moment, to make comments, making improvements and arriving at a common position that, with analogue, you couldn't have achieved there and then.

Could you share a practical tip for shooting portraits with the Lomo'Instant Wide with us?

I think it's important to get to know it, to be aware of how it behaves with light, for example, in this session, I had to discard some photos, because I hadn't stopped to see how they were being exposed, a bit later, I found out I had to turn down the exposure by one value.

What will be the next stage of this personal project?

I've been thinking of starting with self-portraits... we'll see if I dare.

Don't forget to follow Martina on Instagram

Model: Lilith Von Schwarz. You can find her on Instagram

written by rafaelcabral on 2018-01-31 #gear #culture #people #places #portrait #blackandwhite #madrid #lomoinstant #lomoinstantautomat