J. Adam Huggins

Photo for interview of Adam
Alias: Adam
Age: 29
City and Country: Various places around the globe at any given time...

Bio:

From the age of 18, Adam supported himself as a dishwasher and Tofu factory worker until he eventually discovered that people really loved his photographs. He took off and began capturing the world. Front-page stories for The New York Times, an artistic residency at Benetton's creative research centre FABRICA, exhibitions at art spaces like Le Centre Pompidou in Paris, a Human Rights Press Award and a TED Fellowship followed. Today he lives a life of vagabondage with his wife and creative partner, creating film and transmedia projects while expecting their first child in May.

What do you most love about the LC-Wide?

To have such a wide lens on as small a camera as this allows me the great joy of diving into the scenes I'm photographing and intimately capturing my subjects' beautiful waltz through a moment as I dance (sometimes quite literally) alongside them. Also, its ability to shoot half and square frames makes it an even more versatile and truly inspiring camera to make pictures with.

Describe the LC-Wide in five words:

Best camera I've had yet!

What's the strangest, funniest, or hands-down greatest Lomographic encounter that you've ever had?

My father in law grew up in the USSR (he currently lives in Israel) and was quite stunned when he saw my Lomo LC-Wide, as the Russian original LC-A was his childhood camera. Being the good Eastern European that he is, he could not stop making fun of my shooting with, what he called, "an electronic soap-box". Yet he took me around to some of the more forbidden and stranger parts of the holy land on my latest visit, happily opening curious new worlds for me to capture on my little LC-Wide. One bright dawn we explored the shores of the Dead Sea and climbed into a seemingly abandoned junk yard. There, in all her salty majesty, stood a rusted boat crystalized into the saline water. It was a beautiful and odd little scene, made all the more exciting by the sudden appearance of a giant Rottweiler dog, barely held back by the crazed owner of the place urging us to get the hell off his property. To our right was a field of sinkholes and to our left, strangely sci-fi factories harvesting salt from the sea around the clock. We criss-crossed the country... I visited my father in law's small metalworks factory, where I got to capture the meaty faces of a delightfully greasy cast of characters - mostly Russians and Arabs working the beautiful, old school machinery. The holy land had many surprises. Jerusalem at night, Bethlehem on Christmas day, eerily abandoned military barracks in the Golan Heights. My greatest satisfaction came when my father-in-law saw the pictures produced by the disposable soap box. The joke was finally over and he was truly impressed.

Your advice to future LC-Wide shooters?

Because this camera's lens is so wide, often the tip of your finger will find its way into your pictures if you're not careful about how you hold it while shooting. Otherwise just be sure to get in close enough to your subjects. Don't be shy!

Back to LC-Wide Lovers Overview

Follow this link to Adam's gallery