NASHVILLE — Jack White resembles one of those improbable characters from a Coen brothers movie as he leans against his late-'50s Ford Thunderbird, dressed in red and black and holding a hard-shell camera case.
Like a mysterious, gaudy courier, he walks across the steakhouse parking lot in the bright autumn sun. He leaves his thin cigar on a low wall and steps into the restaurant's bar, at ease among the midafternoon regulars even though he stands out like a toucan in a chicken coop.
In a corner booth, the White Stripes' singer and guitarist orders a Glenfiddich on the rocks and opens the case.
"You seen this? . . . This is my camera. . . ." He extracts accessories one after another and lays them on the table -- boxes of peppermint-pattern filters, a fisheye lens, a roll of 120 film, a manual with a camera-headed monkey on the cover. And the centerpiece, a customized White Stripes model of the cheap plastic '80s-vintage Holga camera, in red and white with "JACK . . . The White Stripes" printed on the top.
There's a Meg camera too, for Stripes drummer Meg White. Both models are packaged in boxes designed by the Stripes' visual collaborator Rob Jones and sold through their website and at photo retailers, in a limited edition of 3,000 each. They're part of the Austria-based photo subculture known as lomography, which encourages members to document their worlds by shooting fast and furiously.
It's kind of the garage rock of the photography world, with a "cheaper-simpler" philosophy that appeals strongly to White, 32. A card-carrying member of the National Geographic Society, he intensely monitors the world's vanishing traditions, from indigenous tribal languages to plastic film cameras.
The White Stripes, of course, led the charge of so-called garage rock into rock prominence during the past decade, but right now the band's future is cloudy following an abrupt cancellation of its tour amid concerns over Meg's health.
The duo has found ways to fill the gap, most notably by recording some songs in collaboration with Beck. But today Jack seems more excited about the camera.
"On mine you can also change the flash to red," he says as he inserts two AA batteries in the Holga, then attaches it to an instant camera back, which blocks the viewfinder. "They're completely unpredictable things, that's the whole beauty of them. It's completely unpredictable what kind of light leakage you'll get and what kind of results you're going to get. . . ."
