The Lubitel 166B is a Soviet-made twin-lens reflex camera — the kind of thing you pick up for a few euros at a vide-grenier and expect nothing from. It shoots 6×6 medium format on 120 film, its glass is generously described as “characterful,” the vignetting is real, the sharpness falls off at the edges, and the double-exposure lever is an accident waiting to happen.

Which is precisely why I love it.

A camera that fights back a little forces you to work differently. You look down into the viewfinder rather than through it. You compose from waist height, which changes everything about how you see a face or a street. And when the double exposure is deliberate rather than accidental, the results are something a clean digital file could never produce.

These are images made in Nantes and the Vendée, on days when I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to photograph.