Baby Holga Project Circles the Globe, One Keychain Camera at a Time

A camera the size of a keyring is crossing the United States by post, and its organizer wants 1,000 buyers to bring it back from the dead. The Baby Holga Project, run by Alec Pain — the London-based collector behind Instagram's The Daily Holga — sends out-of-production Micro 110 Holgas between photographers by mail, each participant shooting before passing the camera on.

Pain runs The Daily Holga, posting near-daily since 2023, with challenges, themes, monthly artists in residence and competitions. His annual Noddy Holga contest works as a backward advent calendar: a judging panel picks its top ten images, ranks them one to ten, and the winner — the highest-scoring image, not a popularity vote — is announced on Christmas Eve. He thinks that's fairer than a people's-choice vote, "which usually ends up decided by whoever has the most friends who voted."

The man owns 54 different Holga makes. He collects everything from the Holga N through GN, FN, CFN, GFN and GCFN to the 135 models, the 3D cameras and the digital ones — anything with Holga or Woca on it. Two gaps remain in his list: the WOCA NF-4 and the Holga 135T. He's asking.

Why a keychain camera?

The Baby Holga began life as the Micro 110 Holga, made by Holga and repackaged by Japan's Superheadz as the Baby Holga. Superheadz also produced an Oyakō "Daddy/Mummy and Baby" set. None are made anymore. Pain sourced his on buyee.com; a project participant in Hong Kong, @fromdalens, tracked down her own.

What drew him in? First, that it's a Holga. Second, the pocketable keyring format. When Kodak released its Charmera digital camera and Holga followed with a digital keychain model resembling the original Baby Holga, Pain asked himself a blunt question: "Why isn't there a keychain camera in use that is analogue?" He also liked the creative constraint — making art with something small and basic, and the way images "ghost" onto the edges of the 110 film.

How the swap works

The plan started with a single Baby Holga traveling the globe. Pain had asked Lisa Tang Liu to kick it off, but a chance meeting changed the route: he ran into Kelly Ann Gray at Photo London and handed her the first camera. Gray shot with it, then posted it to Liu.

The US arm — the project Pain joined after a Facebook comment last summer connected him with the project's founder — has participants across the 50 states passing borrowed cameras by mail. The cameras are small, simple and cheap to forward, which is exactly why Pain chose them for a continuous swap.

What does this change for a film community increasingly squeezed by price and scarcity? Pain's verdict so far: it's "a wonderful community — one that is both generous and engaged."

Can a dead camera be revived?

Pain is in discussions with the people who make Holga cameras about a remake. The arithmetic is stark: he needs to fund 2,000 Baby Holgas, likely through Kickstarter or similar, and figures a price of around $20–25 per camera. At 1,000 buyers he thinks he can proceed without being out of pocket, though he's still working out exact numbers.

What's next?

Two books are planned, preliminarily titled Baby, I Love You — 110 Photographers Using 110 Film. One would gather only US photographers from the 50 states, plus possibly Washington, DC. The other would cover the rest of the global participants. The format is democratic: one page per person, with name, Instagram tag, a short bio, a location map and one image, possibly two.

Pain wants viewers to take away three things: beautiful images can come from a tiny keyring camera; the pictures should inspire people to make their own; and photographers might swap cameras or collaborate to learn. He frames his larger lesson generously — take inspiration from what's around you, "whether that's a £5k digital camera, a £20 tiny plastic camera, or, conversely and a little hesitantly, something like AI."

For the participants themselves, he hopes the reward is simpler: the experience of belonging to a community, and images they're proud of. With a crowdfunding push, a two-volume publication and a manufacturer negotiation all in motion, the smallest camera in the Holga catalogue may soon have the biggest second act.