Posted by kluster on October 6, 2010
It’s a strange moment. The one where you, [insert ‘budding’ or ‘established’ here] photographer, realise that your craft has been frozen in a kind of pseudo time-warp since the 1970s.
We experienced that moment recently while flicking through Starburst – Colour photography in America 1970-1980 and it was a little unnerving. Sure, we’ve had our fair share of technological developments to work with: we’ve got phones that take shots as well as – and sometimes better than – a well-manipulated film SLR. And there’s the Keith-Loutit-esque, time-lapse miniature effect that utilises stills but presents them a video format - so, at the end of the day is it actually classifiable as photography? We’re not sure. But for the most part, aesthetically speaking, not much has changed since Ma & Pa picked up their manual camera and ran their first roll of colour film through its spool. We’re still trying to recapture that old aesthetic. The rising popularity of Lomography cameras speaks volumes on this issue. More...
photography, lomography, keith loutit, mitch epstein, steven shore, helen levitt, les krims