Stirring Memories With the Fantome 8 – a Review by Matthew Poburyny

Create memories and relive them in rich black-and-white with the Fantome 8 Kino film. Community member Matthew Poburny. shares with us a personal life story followed by his musings after shooting with the Fantome 8. Shooting on film is indeed a personal journey for others. This one is hinged on the idea of memories and is thoughtfully told in black-and-white images.

Memories in Monochrome
written by Matthew Poburyny

Sometimes it feels like I have the memories of a ghost–having these faded recollections of a time and places that I never knew. It is a much different feeling compared to deja vu when instead of reliving a moment, you wonder if you had ever lived that moment at all.

Nostalgia comes with age as we pass through the various deaths of self in our lives, a form of mourning in the present–glamorized with little white lies. Every photograph is an image of death, a moment that was and that will never be again. All memory a decaying thought left for us to search for some better times once maybe never lived.

Cars were my grandfather's life and cars are all he could remember in the end. He could remember a sale from decades ago, makes and models, days, faces, and names but not mine – Alzheimer's had taken that away from the both of us.

Foggy is the clearest day I can ask for on my open sea of floating memories. "I can't recall" and that is the problem, after all, lost in vapor mists aboard a sinking ship. False is the memory, or true is the lie? Is it up to us to decide?

A medium is a tool for expression–with its inky blacks, heavy contrast, and emotional weight–Fantome 8 Kino from Lomography helped me communicate these ideas of memory loss.

I returned home and went to the trails–that I used to walk religiously along the St. Lawrence Seaway–with my Zenit 122 camera and Helios 44M-6 lens to use the flowing of water and passing of time to create these images.

Helios lenses are known for their swirly bokeh and paired with a slow speed film, I was able to shoot wide open with an equally slow shutter speed of about a 60th to a 30th of a second, leaving room for some possible motion blur.

The pairing of all these elements produced a phantasmal slide show of negatives with a lived and troubling memory of their own. Flashing the Fantome 8 film with spectral light may not have revived my vampiric memories but it reanimated those of the landscapes I photographed.

See more of Matthew's work on his

Do you have a film or gear review you'd like to share with the community? Shoot us an email at marc.ocampo@lomography.com and let's make it happen.

written by cheeo on 2021-07-04 #places #film #black-and-white #monochrome #review #bnw #fantome-8