Hey all, Erik here with a quick guest post about a subject that’s raised a lively debate in our studio. Everyone on our crew has long been shooting with Polaroids, rangefinders, micro 4/3 cameras adapted to accept vintage lenses…even processing digital images to look like they came out of an old dusty camera. Surveying the landscape, it’s clear this tide has been rising for a while now and we’re not the only ones attached to this stuff. So the question I present to you is this:
Why is retro or faux-retro photography so popular these days?
Why, when we have such capable and inexpensive cameras at our disposal, are we reverting to old technology and old aesthetics? Is it pure nostalgia? Is it a palette cleanser from the ease and accuracy of said capable and inexpensive cameras? Is it a passing trend? We have opinions–especially Chase does as you might expect–but we’d like to hear from you.
It’s a artistic story-telling tool and style that can also be abused.
I think it’s a fad, but it’s also an artistic tool that is being rediscovered.
The previous fun fad was hyper-realistic photos that were over-saturated and popped so much you either wanted to skydive, go mountain biking, or bathe your eyes in something soothing like an oatmeal bath.
Part of my studies a decade ago were in design and how style groups became subcultures and eventually become pop culture. That’s when I noticed a few years ago that…
– Current fashion fad is vintage.
– Current music fad is indie.
– Current business fad is home-made.
Therefore it didn’t surprise me that we have shops like Etsy rising up to fill a home-business, I-can-do-it-too attitude that is home grown and ranges from Ma & Pa Kettle to DeviantArt emo-grunge and then over to a sort of flower-child-style from the 60’s and 70’s.
This fun and eclectic interest in vintage styles was inevitable. Everything old is now new again. Every single time we discover something we get bored with it and eventually come back to it again with new eyes. Eventually we’ll probably see a resurgence in gothic styles again… no, not gothic like a goth chick with spiky black hair and the lip ring, goth like the time period and architecture. In some ways it’s already here but not as big as it could be, some of it seen through black and white city photography.
Art is largely about emotions and communication. It might be either from the artist or the artist trying to draw the emotion or communication from the audience. Vintage photography or any type of stylized art can attempt to do so without trying to appeal to strict realism. Hyper-realism can also tell a story, but a different one. Vintage has a certain flair that in some ways I think has less restraints on it than any of the forms of realism, which is one reason I think it has a competitive edge over other styles as an art-language, though that edge might be heavily feathered 😉
I’ve been around for a while and I had darkrooms and did all that film processing and printing. And while there are characteristics of that process that I love/miss about those prints, I’m finding that as time moves on the digital realm is able to give me the tools to achieve that look and feel at least as well if not better. For me, it’s the image that really dictates the treatment it should receive. Whether it’s retro or thoroughly modern, I’m grateful we have the tools to easily push the image in many directions in order to more easily evaluate what works. I see no reason why the retro look should die out….it’s just part of our tool bag. And the broader our palette, the better.
It’s to turn a boring, uninspired photograph into something that looks artsy. It’s just a way to cover up a bad photo.
FAD pure and simple. Add to the list… Sepia, Selective Colour, White Vins from the 80’s, Flare, Hyper HDR, Tiltshift cityscapes…. and a longer list I left out.
I must have a different iPhone from most others… cause the images out of mine are cr*p compared to well… any other digital camera I can think of made this side of Y2K. As a camera of last resort… I love it… as a choice to do something not at all feeling the love.
I used Film & Polaroid the first time around…. I ain’t buying into that again in any serious way and certainly not the effect on a new camera body. However…..it’s nice now and then for nostalgia purposes for us old codgers BUT most of the people thinking it’s cool are not old enough to have nostalgia 🙂 I actually miss the hardware of old cameras… there is magic about advancing film with that lever… and then you flip on the scanner and remember why you swore off the previous roll of film.
Because people want to remember what they thought was better times way back then (when they were younger) And by taking photos that remind them of their past it takes them to a happier state of mind 🙂 Just my 2cents any way!