“Riverspan,” a photo by Donna Lee Rollins, displayed as part of “The Toy Camera” at Astoria Visual Arts.
An evocative exhibit of work by Astoria photographer Donna Lee Rollins is on display through July 11 at Astoria Visual Arts.
Rollins shot the series using Diana and Holga vintage toy cameras, manufactured in China in the 1960s and 1970s.
Originally given away as carnival prizes, these cameras are single-aperture with a simple plastic lens. They produce characteristic image distortions that result in inconsistent areas of soft focus, vignette, fog, light streaks and lens flare.
“The shooting experience becomes an opportunity for playful trial and error or experimentation, as the results will always be unpredictable,” Rollins said.
Historic techniques
Using a classic darkroom procedure, Rollins prints her images from acetate film negatives to create archival silver halide black-and-white prints.
She then applies translucent colorants to each print, utilizing historic techniques for hand-colored photography that arose in Europe in the 1830s and were popular throughout the Victorian era.
Using a darkroom process, Rollins prints her images from acetate film negatives to create black-and-white prints, which she then colors by hand.
“I’m drawn to the magic of black-and-white photography and so have remained an alchemic photographer,” Rollins said. “I create my silver halide photographs and alchemic images using many of the formulas and printmaking methods that were first devised in the mid-19th century.”
The resulting images have a timeless quality to them, hazy and soft-focused, ephemeral and playful. Some of the pieces feature docks and seascapes; others the elusive bend and reach of a brambled forest.
One gallery alcove offers a series of images depicting the Astoria Bridge’s geometric symmetry under a pastel-hued sky. The gables and turrets of the Flavel House Museum offer another strong subject, rendering the residence’s distinctive architectural features into intersecting bold strokes.
Embracing imperfections
Rollins has been interested in art since she was a young child, but initially thought she’d be a printmaker.
One semester in art school, however, she got knocked out of printmaking and was left with an opening in a photography course.
She began shooting with an Olympus pen half-frame camera, which remains a cult favorite and produces 48 tiny little pictures for each roll of film. Rollins fell in love with the medium.
A series of tree images on the gallery wall at Astoria Visual Arts.
As she put herself through college, she borrowed cameras to reduce costs and worked as the school’s darkroom attendant so she would have access to the equipment she needed.
Initially working with traditional cameras, Rollins fell into a trap of seeking perfection, but as she worked with toy cameras, she realized that the imperfections themselves created the images’ beauty.
She also appreciates the way small cameras “fit in the hand of a woman without being bulky or heavy,” allowing her to “shoot and shoot to see what I come up with.”
What she has come up with is a stylized, atmospheric perspective on the world.
‘Connected to the work’
Rollins, who has a master’s degree in photography and museum studies and has served as faculty at several universities, has been featured in solo shows at Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland, Maine, and Radiant Light Gallery in Portland.
Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of the University of New England. Rollins relocated her studio and custom darkroom from Portland, Maine, to the North Coast 10 years ago.
Locally, her work has been shown at Cannon Beach Gallery, LightBox Photographic Gallery and RiverSea Gallery.
“As I hand-process and individually hand-paint each image with colored pencils or photo oils directly on the print surface, I feel connected to the work in an organic way,” Rollins said. It is important to her that each of her images reflects the “hand of the artist,” remaining individually handcrafted and unique.
