This past week as I was scrolling through my feed on my Instagram profile, a profile that is strictly film photography based – not my personal account, I came across what I thought was an art piece. To my surprise, what I thought was an amazing sculpture made out of old film roll cassettes was actually a functioning, working analog camera made out of those old film roll cassettes.
Iranian artist and film photographer Alireza Rostami is known for his DIY projects where he transforms inanimate objects into firing cameras. He has turned both a broken computer and an old watch into cameras – bringing old pieces from cameras and the inanimate object themselves to life synchronously. All cameras he has created shoot on 120 medium format film – a larger format that a more commonly heard of 35 mm format film.
What better way to pay homage to both art and a love for photography than to combine the both for an exceptional piece like this? Alireza’s inspiration for this project lies within an unrelated subject – The Diary of Anne Frank. His bubbling emotions and thoughts while reading the writings of Anne Frank forced his mind to think about love, peace and unity around the world. He then named his future DIY project “Unity Camera”. In this most recent piece which contains 195 film cassettes; he draws an artistic parallel to the number of countries in the world; 195.
Speaking from a circulation standpoint, this project was picked up by the Instagram community pretty fast. Alireza posts on his Instagram regularly; he is the definition of the “suave, old school” film photographer. From the leather jackets, the slicked back hair, and the all black old school Rolleiflex medium format film camera – he fits the bill. There are only a few artists amongst the photography community that dabble amongst different artistic mediums and it is clear Alireza’s dedication to not only film but sculpture and DIY art is immense.
The reason projects like this are important to the film photography community is because it bends the boundaries of art within the subject. It re imagines what we as photographers and artists think we can create. Whenever an artist comes out with an original idea, aesthetic, or works, it will be respected and circulated amongst the community online.
I thought it was important to share Alireza’s work because it blurs the lines between multiple artistic disciplines in a seamless way. Below I will include some awesome pictures that follow Alireza’s building work of his cameras as well as some of the images he made with those built DIY cameras. You can follow along with Alireza Rostami on Instagram here.
Shutter Hunter 