02 Jul 2025

Glow in the Dark

by Felipe De La Hoz

Photographs by the author

I’m using my precious Hydra space this month to write about something that’s often been on my mind: LomoChrome Purple, an ISO 100-400 color-shift film emulsion produced by the cheeky analog photography company Lomography, which renders most scenes in sumptuous hues of blue and purple.

Now, readers who’ve seen my byline over pontifications on assorted man-made horrors may be surprised by this decision to proselytize about a novelty film stock within the already niche practice of contemporary film photography—a film that by the way is objectively terrible, technically.

Its dynamic range is awful, you can easily crush shadows and blow highlights in the same frame, the grain is pretty hardcore and it doesn’t handle underexposure particularly well. While it’s rated up to ISO 400, shooting it at that speed makes it muddy and turns the purples into a kind of unpleasant sickly color along with weird greens, making LomoChrome Purple a film that’s best shot in daytime or with a pretty fast lens. On paper, it sucks, but it’s also delightful and plenty weird, which is frankly just something we need more of right now.

I want to have stuff like Lomo Purple in my life because it’s got few practical applications and is simply odd for its own sake; it provides no productivity gains, nor is it going to be a go-to for commercial clients. Lomography’s line-up of lo-fi cameras and films are marketed towards hipsters and bla bla bla but who cares? They’re fun and film’s fun. If we don’t have those sorts of things in a world shaped by the sinister forces I’m usually weighing in on, what are we even fighting for?

I haven’t been shooting this stock long, but I’ve shot it in some weird situations. There’s some of my bread and butter street photography, capturing street scenes and little urban moments rendered alien-like by the color shift. I’m partial to this image, shot in the conservatory gardens at the northern edge of Central Park, that looks like I’ve captured a dream that this child is having of some strange, desolate world.