By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
TRIBECA — Photographers don't need a $5,000 camera to create art.
That's the idea behind the 18th annual Krappy Kamera exhibit at the Soho Photo Gallery on White Street.
The exhibit features dozens of breathtaking images — a gardener working with the Manhattan skyline at his back, a freckled boy clutching an armful of water balloons — all captured with cameras that don't even require batteries.
Most of the photographers in the exhibit used a Holga camera, which is made entirely from plastic, even the lens. The cameras, which sell for about $35 and take 120-millimeter film, were originally intended as toys, but they have developed a following among artists who like the blurred, surrealist effect they impart.
The images are often darker around the edges and are unpredictable, because no two cameras are exactly the same.
"I love the surprise," said Sandra Carrion, a member of the Soho Photo Gallery, who started the Krappy Kamera show in 1992. "You never really know what it's going to do. It's the quirkiness of it, the serendipity."
Once the artists snap a picture with the cheap camera, they are allowed to doctor it in any way they like, and many of the photos on display underwent digital editing.
"It's the Krappy Kamera show, not the crappy photo show," Carrion said. "It should be as beautiful as you can make it."
Carrion, 60, a Long Island resident, came up with the idea for a Krappy Kamera exhibit after she discovered that she was not alone in often preferring cheap cameras to expensive ones. She picked the alternative spelling of "Krappy Kamera" to make the exhibit more playful, and the phrase has gained so much traction that she trademarked it five years ago.
This year, 235 artists from 36 states and 12 other countries submitted more than 1,500 photos to the TriBeCa gallery's competition. The winner is "WTF-OMG" by T.R. Smith, a Brooklyn photographer who captured two women on the street looking very surprised.
In past years, the Soho Photo Gallery allowed people to submit cellphone photos because the cameras on the phones were of such poor quality. Now, though, phone cameras have gotten so good that Carrion decided to ban them from the competition.
In addition to Holga cameras and similar plastic ones, the competition also allows pinhole cameras and disposable ones — anything that doesn't have too many controls.
The month-long exhibit includes the 50 winners of the international competition, plus separate shows of the gallery's members and a collection by Michelle Bates, who has been shooting with the Holga for 20 years.
Soho Photo Gallery, 15 White St., is showing the Krappy Kameras exhibit Wednesday to Sunday 1 to 6 p.m. through April 2. The gallery is holding an opening reception for the small works competition March 1 from 6 to 8 p.m.
