Autumn With Anjel, Through a Sixty Year Old Lens
I put an old Russian lens on the front of my camera for this one. A Helios, older than me, the kind of glass that renders the world slightly wrong on purpose. Backgrounds swirl. Light blooms where it shouldn't. Nothing is clinical.
I wanted to see what it did in autumn light, with someone who suits the era it came from.
Anjel wore leopard and a black fur, a flower in her hair, and stood in a park full of fallen leaves. The lens did its thing. Soft where a modern lens would be sharp, a glow around the edges, that spin in the background that only old glass gives you.
But the lens isn't what I remember.
She arrived as herself and left as someone from 1955. Somewhere in the middle of the session she stopped standing in front of the camera and started living inside the character, and you can see the exact frames where it happened. The chin lifts. The eyes settle. She's not being photographed anymore, she's somewhere else and letting me watch.
The old lens and the woman found the same decade.
— Tony
