light at the top of the stairs
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 08:44AM 
Light at the top of the stairs
There is an entire genré of picturing making that as far as I know has no overarching name. In various quarters it goes under a variety of names - toy camera, krappy kamera, etc. or even by the name of the camera involved - Holga/Loma/Diana (and various derivatives) photography. Then, of course, there is the Lensbaby sub-genré, wherein krappy optics reach a heretofore unheard of heights of technical capability.
The defining characteristic of all these variously-named pictures is the lack of definition that comes from using truly awful optics, in most cases, plastic lenses of dubious manufacture. For those who make and/or appreciate these types of pictures, that quality is precisely what they like. Most often there is a smallish central zone of relative sharpness surrounded by a print area of very soft focus out to the edges.
I have always been attracted to whatever the hell this type of picture making is called but I have never really delved into it with any real vigor. The closest I have come to pursuing it would be my love affair with the Polaroid SX-70 camera and the now-vanquished Time Zero film. While that camera could hardly be described as krappy - it is a slr with good optics, auto focusing (or manual if you prefer), and auto exposure (with limited manual override) - but the pictures that the machine spit out had a distinct "other-ness" to them that resulted from the particular, some might say peculiar, characteristics of Time Zero film.
One of the things I like/liked about SX-70 Polaroid pictures was the fact that there was still a semblance of "the real" to them that most krappy-kamera pictures lack. Yet they also had a certain lack of definition that moved them ever so slightly into the realm of pictures that don't quite look like pictures (as most know them) - a slightly more lyrical and/or dream-like quality that I like.
As mentioned many times here, the medium of photography is a cohort with the real. That is the defining characteristic of the medium which distinguishes it from the other 2-dimensional visual arts. That said, everyone should know that a picture of a thing is not the thing itself. It is a trace or a representation of the pictured thing.
However, as we all know, some traces are more accurate in representing the real than others. Pick a photographic potion - Velvia film, the Hue & Saturation slider, (bad) HDR, extreme wide angle lenses, etc. - and mis-representing reality is just an "interpretation" away. And yes, a krappy kamera or some such derivative must be included in that list. After all, unless you are afflicted with some sort of sight defect, you don't see the world like a krappy kamera does.
All of that said, I am much more inclined to accept the results of krappy kamera picture making than I am to accept, as an example, the Velvia mis-representations. That's simply because no one I know of is representing their krappy kamera pictures as "real". For the most part, they acknowledge that what they are making are pure flights of emotional fantasy. Acts of the imagination. Representations of vague and ethereal feelings, memories, and/or dreams.
Not that the emotions and feelings they are trying to represent / express aren't real. It just that they use what could be labeled as a form of photographic hyperbole to express or connect to those emotions and feelings. And, IMO, it is feelings / emotions / dreams states - much more so than the literal referent of their pictures - that their pictures are all about.
At least that's how it appears to me.
In any event, I have never been able to give myself wholly over to the emotional side of picture making. I have always thought that it would be way too easy to slip into the manufacture of trite maudlin pictures. That, eventually, if one were not careful, the technique would become the thing rather than the meaning behind it and the purpose for it would become secondary.
Maybe. Maybe not. I can't say for certain. But, in a nutshell, that's one of the reasons I've stayed with SX-70 picture making - it's real camera that makes real pictures albeit with a tip of the hat to the krappy kamera genré.
Reader Comments (1)
So much of artistic movements seem to be able to be defined as being the opposite of what went before. Time again a new style pops up mostly as a direct rejection of the current fashion. Crappy cameras seem like a backlash against the ever improving wave of digital, clean, crisp imaging.