“IOWA” – In the early 1970’s, Nancy Rexroth began photographing the rural landscapes, children, white frame houses, and domestic interiors of southeastern Ohio with a plastic toy camera called the Diana: The “Diana” was a very simply constructed box camera with a mechanical film advance, spring-loaded shutter, and a primitive plastic viewfinder. It is constructed primarily of low-quality phenolic plastics of the type commonly found in toys imported from Asia during the 1960s. Because of wide variances in production quality, combined with a poorly designed camera body latching mechanism, Diana cameras are predisposed to light leaks onto the exposed film. If not desired, such leaks can be temporarily remedied by sealing the seams with light-proof tape after loading the film. The design of the Diana incorporates a crude lens that produces an image circle which only marginally covers the diagonal of a film frame. This marginal coverage field produces images with often pronounced vignetting. The poor quality of the plastic meniscus lens results in generally low contrast and resolution, odd color rendition, chromatic aberration, and blurred images. Additionally the crude advance and shutter mechanism can result in images that are not properly centered or exposed. Although these attributes are generally thought undesirable in a camera, various photographers and art photography schools have intentionally utilized these characteristics to produce photographs with interesting or artistic effects. The San Francisco Art Institute seems to have been the first school to employ the Diana in its photography program in 1967-68 as a way of stimulating creative vision without undue reliance upon camera features and technology. Later other schools picked up the idea, including Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. The use of the Diana in this role achieved a new level of fame when the camera was utilized by American photographer and former Ohio University photography student Nancy Rexroth in this much influential 1976 photobook.