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.
From my point of view is that everyone is of the digital images that are being produced and want more of that feel that they grew up with, sure kids nowadays find it cool but that’s a different story. When it comes to the professional level I see it as a way to differentiate one’s work from others especially since now it’s easy for anyone to own a high-end camera and get really good photos with little work so some professionals are going back to film to differentiate themselves from others.
Personally I’ve always loved film and was hesitant to shoot digital but I did anyways and then went back to film once I learned the basics. I still own a digital DSLR but it’s mostly for testing setups, especially when using flash, or techniques and shoot all of my important work on film.
The fun. The randomness. The emotion. The nostalgia. The access to decades of genius, pain, brilliance and struggle via filters that I can put on a picture of what I ate for lunch. It’s all been said so well by those before me, so I’ll try to go where people haven’t. Here it is:
False history. We’re all adrift here for only so much time. Anchoring ourselves to the past (even if it’s not real) makes us feel one notch more permanent and established before we die and are gone forever.
(Nailed it.)
A lot of us are newer to photography and with digital making photography so much more available to everyman, maybe there is a bit of attitude with those styles. Along the lines of “well I was into photography when…” attitude perhaps stated by the use of vintage cameras and films, or a better explanation as others have suggested – the vintage stuff makes us feel warm and fuzzy as we remember photos of our youth. Great question.
From a personal perspective, what I get out of film is the “insecurity” that I don’t get from digital. Let me explain that better. Joe McNally once mentioned that now that he’s gone digital (for work at least – I don’t know if he still flirts with film) he shoots less images on a shoot because he has instant feedback that something has worked as (or better than) he wanted it to.
In film he’d capture the image way beyond – double, treble cameras, multiple shots, etc in case something had gone wrong (or would go wrong) with something along the way (in between him seeing the image in his mind’s eye and the viewer seeing his interpretation). Now he captures the shot, know’s it’s in the bag and moves on to something else (crudely put, there’s probably more than that, I know).
Now that’s what I find important about film. The uncertainty and insecurity mean you invest more in the moment. Knowing you can’t delete, that you can’t see what mess-up or miracle you’ve created until it comes out of the tank, and gets printed means there’s an emotional investment with every click of the shutter.
There’s more of a relationship in that.
And that relationship, that investment, will rub off on the digital (just as the digital will change your relationship and investment too!).
I think that people want to see new looks, no matter the media. This was true 100 years ago when the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt started his Secession movement: to create something that moved beyond the staid look of the Neoclassical tradition that he grew out of. Or something like that…
People, especially artists, get tired of looking at the same style over and over. Not to mention, if you’re an advertiser trying to figure out how to distinguish yourself from your competitors, you want to try new approaches to be distinctive. And a new visual style is just one approach.
For example, it’s sometimes refreshing to see an illustration in a magazine (instead of a photograph), and vice-versa. Anything that catches your eye and mixes things up, and tells a story in a new way.
And from the other comments, it’s obviously a way for photographers to try out a “new” look. Though I agree that it can cover up lighting and compositional flaws. And in the end, I believe that a photographer’s personality, if they let it show in their work, will be unique despite the specific technology.