“In the Club”: Anthony Stone's Photo Project with the Lomo'Instant Automat Glass

Our LomoAmigo Anthony Stone is back to introduce us to "In the Club", his new instant photography project made in a techno club to tell a fragment of the lives of the young people who hang out there. The project was done entirely with the Lomo'Instant Automat Glass camera, which Anthony chose for its versatility and lens quality that allowed him to shoot "on the fly," without framing with a viewfinder, in the spirit of Lomography's Golden Rules!

Hi Anthony, welcome back to our magazine! What have you been up to lately?

Hi everyone, it's a pleasure to be here again. I love the Lomography community, you can really breathe photography and real life, and lots and lots of art, things that nowadays social media offer almost no more. Lately I've been working, working, working. In fact, my status as a freelance photographer has led me to shoot in several nightclubs a week with very diverse clientele, which is challenging, but also very stimulating, because it forces me on a daily basis to revise my approach to photography and my relationship with the people I relate to, adapting from time to time the photographic style to the mood of the night.

Tell us about your new instant photography project, "In the Club."

"In the Club" was born from a reflection on the "here and now," on young people and their time. I have been working at Cantieri Disco, a techno/electro house club close to Pescara, for just over two years. This experience has put me in contact with very young people, with their reality and their time, and they are beautiful. I immediately felt the urge to tell their story. Luckily, the venue gives me enviable creative freedom, which is really rare for this kind of work and for which I thank the owner so much (thank you Valerio). This allowed me to have an authorial approach to nightlife photography. My source of inspiration, of course, is the great Marco Pesaresi, his photos of the 90s Riccione nightlife are a guiding light for me. I experienced those years and his photos take me back there, to that time, my time. Here, "In the Club" follows the same principle, stopping the here and now of the youth, telling what they are today to the children they will have tomorrow.

Why did you specifically choose the Lomo'Instant Automat Glass to shoot these pictures?

I asked myself, what is the best tool to capture the moment, just as it is, unique and unrepeatable? I shoot digitally for work, but the file that the camera returns is an interpretation of reality given by the sensor and the software of the camera itself, then the whole thing is reprocessed on the PC and reinterpreted by my sensibility. But I, at this stage of the project, wanted to have exactly what I was seeing, what I was feeling at that moment, naked, unfiltered. The answer was simple, since I have been shooting with Polaroid and Fuji Instax for several years.

The choice fell on the Lomo'Instant Automat Glass because of the versatility of the camera, the quality of the lens, the small size and the speed of film development. I also experimented with an old Polaroid Impulse, but the excessive bulk and low film quality made me abandon it after only one attempt in favor of the Lomo'Instant Automat Glass, which immediately proved perfect for the project thanks to and especially to its 21 mm lens, which allows me to shoot "on the fly," without framing with the viewfinder, but composing freehand from any position. Finally, the material aspect of instant photography is a not inconsiderable plus. Having a "real" photo and not a file makes everything more intense and exciting. In fact, I have even given away some shots during the evening in the hope that they will be preserved in time as precious memories.

Have you ever shot in clubs before this project? What was the experience like?

This is my first experience with instant photography in a Club. It's been an absolutely positive experience and I will continue this summer.

Do you have any other photography projects in mind for the near future?

Not at the moment. I still want to focus on "In the Club", to expand and structure it and maybe, why not, make it into a fanzine.

Follow Anthony Stone on Instagram to see more of his wonderful photography.

written by ludovicazen on 2023-08-03 #gear #people #party #night-life #club #instant-photography #documentary #lomo-instant-automat-glass