The Smallest Things Can Make A Person Happy

I picked up the April issue of American Photo On Campus today in the lab at school. I didn't even bother to read the cover but one of the featured stories is called Plastic Factastic: Why cheap cameras can be so precious. A classmate of mine is currently using a Holga to shoot work for this course. Having used a Holga before (and loving it) and even writing about it earlier this quarter I would've totally opened up to that page and read immediately. But instead I just started flipping through the short magazine doing what I do best and just looking at the images. Then I saw this:

I recognized this image IMMEDIATELY and got super excited. This is the work of Jennifer Shaw
( Jennifershaw.net ) which I have loved since the first day I saw it. She shot with a Holga and created a series she calls Hurricane Story. She placed a magnifying glass over her Holga lens to create this familiar effect that carries on through all of the images. I immediately looked over at my classmate Hannah and said "Have you seen this!" She responded with "Yeah" looking at me like a crazy person because for some reason I assumed she would know who's work it was. She did not...I got way excited and told her to look at Jennifer Shaw's work and went on and on, pulled up her portfolio web site and all.

The reason I got so excited is when I participated in the Visual Narratives and Photographic Essay course one of the instructors introduced me to Jennifer Shaw and her son was my subject for one day while we were in New Orleans. So in seeing her work I made that personal connection remembering the day we spent at the park and I was super excited to talk about my experience. That class was such a different experience, at least once a week I think we bring up something about it or something that happened while we were there. Money well spent. :)