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.
I think this hits on a good button here, and that is that our creative sides are rebelling against this uber gear oriented ideology. Gear technology has become so advanced. We can take a picture, go into Photoshop edit the snot out of it and come up with a picture that looks like an old cross-processed photo, or an old poloroid, or even just an old camera that has seen better days. But why not just go buy one of those cameras and take these photos?
I think it has to do with the idea that it’s not the norm. There is beauty in picking up a camera and taking a picture only to have something so different than the crisp clean images our modern day cameras take. It’s almost as if there is an added (semi uncontrollable) aspect to our images. When we are post-processing an image we are in control, but in many of these vintage pieces, there is an element that we cannot control. That is a beautiful thing when creating art.
Yes images can be post processed to look like something old, but there is something special about the fact that it can come straight out of the camera.
Also for me there is a creative aspect to it. I have an old medium format Lubitel, and there is something about going out with 12 frames. I find that my creative vision with that camera is far different than with my DSLR.
I guess its more of a matter of rarity. Humans automatically attract to whatever is rare. Now that hi-fi digital gigs r all around, like even a 4yr old knows to click photos with an iphone, i guess attachment to vintage gear is obvious since they are rare. And for masters like you and many others, who know the charm of such oldies, its going to add a lot of nostalgia quotient too 🙂
I’m a fan of analog, it doesn’t matter if music or photo stuff. And I think a lot of people feel the same.
But the problem that I have with real analog is that it is in these days expensive and to slow.
The new lomo is a crazy expensive piece of plastic. The development of film in Germany is already very expensive.
And I have now time for a darkroom. That’s why I go pseudo retro, x100 and hipstamatic instead of lomo.
I know it is not the same, but it is the only possipility in my why of life with traveling a lot.
I’d say it’s all part of the cyclical nature of fashion and popular culture.
The Mini, the VW beetle, Fiat 500, Leggings, neon colours, hi-tops, “The Karate Kid”. . . . . I could go on. How many more popular “things” from our youth (past) are going to be remade, rereleased, rehashed, repeated. It seems to be the way our culture works. Perhaps due to a lack of tradition, or perhaps as a shot against our tradition.
Maybe this is what has pushed us down our “retro” path. Then again maybe it’s the marketing guys who spotted the trend as it sparked into life and jumped upon it with all their tack and savvy. “Hey look market research says people are feeling disconnected in the modern world, give them something which harks back to a simpler happier time” Flump here comes the new Mini, flump here’s a remake of the Goonies, flump here’s a way to make your photographs looks like the ones in your folks photo albums.
I think it’s the fact that all our perfect camera’s, make such perfect images, that they don’t look natural to us anymore. They are too perfect. They miss the warm tones and the imperfectness of the images we know from the past. The images that give the viewer that romantic “oh, remember this”-feeling.
Just some ideas of me… 😉