Bellambi jetty 2021
This image was taken on a Rollei 16S. A compact camera that can take up 18 shots on 50cms of 16mm perforated film. I have a growing collection of cameras still and moving. I come across an unknown old camera and become excited about what the possibilities of chance could happen inside the little light tight box. When there can be no manual to be found it highlights the cameras intuitive design. James Gibson coined the term affordance to explore the idea that our perception system is built in relation to our environment. We perceive texture, surface and objects in our environment in such a way that intuits their use. Attending to a cliff, it affords a dropping off place, a surface at knee height is a sitting down place and so on. Applying this concept to my Rollei 16S; the little camera affords companion in tight spaces (my kayak) because it is tiny and weights next to nothing, it intuits an extended panorama along a jetty because the film is loaded horizontally which leads one to think of what you might photograph along its 50cm long surface. Perceptual artists who concern themselves with medium specificity and agency will be familiar with this idea that certain machines or materials just want to behave a certain way. You might say my Rollei 16S wanted to take a multiple frame picture of the jetty.