Nofilter
London, 20th August 2012
I shoot expired film. I have a number of weird cameras, some way older than myself, some more recent but equally going against the grain of the unstoppable hyper-sharp-giga-pixel photography trend. I even process my own film, usually flouting the instructions and treating my chemicals in ways that should get Amnesty banging at my door some day.
The results are often weird, and wonderful.
So I get the counter-trend of "vintage" digital photo applications. I really do.
But if you, developer of yet-another-vintage-photography app think you are going to seduce me away from my celluloid ways with your fancy-crappy filters, think again.
You just don't know me so well.
Yes, of course, I like you: thanks to you, I can see my friends' life unfold. That's a given. But your "vintage"-looking filters cannot replace the joy of my weirdography (or lomography™, or wayward photography, or whatever), because what I like about it has little to do about how the end result looks. It's all about surprise.
It's about taking a film roll of the spool, hanging it above the bathtub, and thinking “that's not mine… merde, who gave me this batch of film again?”. It's about scanning a strip and giggling at how spectacularly bad (or good) the pictures turned out. And it's about giving negatives weeks, sometimes months to mature, re-discover them as I develop and scan them, and re-create their story. The photograph becomes the raw material, not the end product.
Give me an app without live preview, sequester my shots for a random period between a day and a year, and I might just give up my film cameras. And even then…
London, August 2012
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