LomoAmigo & Community Newbie Mathias Malzieu Shoots with the Lomo LC-A+

Writer, musician, director and all around good guy Mathias Malzieu of rock’n’roll band Dionysos is our newest LomoAmigo! He shares his thoughts about Lomography and the community with us and rocks out with the LOMO LC-A+!

Real Name: Mathias Malzieu
Age:36 years
Location: Born In Montpellier, childhood in Valence, now…Paris!

Tell us a bit about yourself (4-5 sentences):

I love being surprised. So I almost always devour adventures. I need stories, and I love to tell stories and to be told stories. I am a singer in a rock’n’roll band – Dionysos, a sort of parallel family. I have written two novels and a collection of short stories. Right now i am directing an animated movie based on my last novel, with the soundtrack performed by Dionysos. And i owe it to my girlfriend to have become a Lomographer.

Do you have a Lomography Alias? If not Why not?:

I do not have a LomoHome, because i don’t have a scanner yet. But the remedy is on the way! The simple fact that I became a LomAmigo made me want to keep a regularly updated gallery. In addition to the photos taken with the LC-A+, you will have the chance to discover my Diana+ and Spinner 360º pictures!

How long have you been a Lomographer? How did you get into it? How do you plan to get out of it? Rehab?

I have been a Lomographer since April 16th 2010. It was my girlfriend who had the marvelous idea to offer me a Diana+ for my anniversary. The obsolete and playful dimension of it’s blue body immediately charmed me. From the first clicks i felt the same sort of sensation as when i played the ukulele for the first time. It was something epic and miniature at the same time. To get rid of it, i think i would have to go blind. And even then i think i would campaign for Lomography in Braille. 

Which of the golden rules do you follow the most?

Lomography does not interfere with your life, it is part of it." Taking pictures has become a ritual, a chemistry of happy happenstance, which is part of my petit daily pleasures. The mini stage-fever of fetching my pictures at the lab and then discovering them on the terrace of a café (with an apricot juice on the side).

The strangest, funniest, or hands-down greatest photographic/Lomographic encounter that you have had. Are you planning on other ones?

I was wearing a cat costume and sunglasses and i was pacing at the Montmatre cemetery with my longboard and shot the tombs, the clouds and my cat head in multiexposure. I was snapped up by the graphic elements, the trees and most of all the passers-by, who must have taken me for a kind of cat-phantom. A kid looked at me as if i were some low brow super hero, an old man was waving his walking cane at me, screaming and an old lady applauded me as if i were a racer in the tour de France… Wearing a costume takes hour inhibits and turns you into someone likable or gruesome for the subject you are likely to photograph.

I have a few projects: go and take entire rolls of film of snowy landscapes to expose them a second time later in the ocean. Go to the Louvre disguised as the Cat with Sunglasses. Shoot the Eiffel tower when it glitters at night and do a second shot on the roll with daytime portraits.

If your photos shown here could have a soundtrack of three songs, which would they be? (title, artist)

• “Sundown” Lee hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra
• “the hunter” Bjork
• “red right hand "Nick cave and the bad seeds

Which is your all time favorite Lomography camera?

The LC-A+. I also love the Diana a lot, she will stay my first love. But the LC-A+, in my eyes, has the best balance between charm and uncontrollable madness. I am having a terribly good time with the Spinner 360º, too.

How annoyed were you when you found out that you had become a Lomography Amigo?

To depart for the adventure that is the LC-A+, eve when i was perfectly comfy with my Diana, I took the risk, for the first time, of showing my pictures outside the my circle of friends, and finding myself in such a beautiful project with artist, that i am a fan of, like Neil Gaiman or Beirut.

Your best photo from this project?

I shot a whole roll of film in the waves of Lanzarote, I rewound and reshot it in Paris, all in black and white. On one of those pictures, you see a wave breaking across the Moulin Rouge at Pigalle, almost like it is crumbling . This picture triggers troubled feelings in me. You don’t know if it’s funny or dramatic. The pleasures of accidents, provoked in Lomographyland…

Your words of wisdom to other Lomographers out there?

Become who you are, while you still have the time. Reveal the mad-doctor in you (more the mad than the doctor), the handyman, the illusionist, the gourmet, the adventurer, and most of all, do not hesitate to try everything, even if you might fail in a lot of things. You have to enjoy it, and inevitably, you will end up with surprising results, even surprising even for yourself.

escrito por plainjane el 2010-10-25 #gente #lomoamigo #mathias-malzieu-lca