Hipstamatic - The New Disposable

The very first idea of this post came to me many months ago - I was reviewing my app-use trying to see if I could clean up a little bit my iPhone from apps that I don't use and camera apps take the largest share of apps for me. This leads to a struggle every time I want to take a picture - which app to use? Luckily most apps offer the option to import a picture from the camera roll so I can simply use the regular camera app that Apple includes. But Hipstamatic is an exception and as one of the very few exceptions (there was also Lomora 2 some time ago but a big update last year made it possible to import photos) of apps that simply take a picture not allowing you to import or to export original file. And that appears to be something they are adamant not to change. And I think this idea is a revelation in today's photographic sphere where multiple edits and painting over pictures diminishes the spontaneous nature of preserving a memory. When one spends too much time thinking of how a picture should look like, it is no longer a collection of an emotion but a polished work of art - and that's quite alright, too. But I take the picture not because I want to make art for someone else but to preserve a memory for myself. 

There is something scary about standing in front of a finished piece of art - it is there, it carries its own value and it is immutable. It is not encouraging the question "what will happen if ..." but it asks the question "what made it happen". These are two distinct world-views - the exploratory and the questioning, the courageous and the accommodating, the acting and the observing, the emotional and the objective.

The finished work of art (the one that is thought through and designed by nature) is not welcoming; it is only existing out there, occupying space and time - demonstrating the great power of the human mind to design. The unpolished work on the other hand (the one with imperfections) is a charmer; it starts its existance challenging its own existance - it takes up no space and no time - and yet it is there demonstrating the great power of the human ego to feel.

And it is this questionning power and self-effacing evaluation in today's ego-, head-, and objectivity-centered society that make us add those imperfections and the unplanned to our pictures - consciously or not. And I am guilty as charged to extole and abuse them to my own catharctic advantage.

Museums, paintings, and art history

I woke up in the morning relaxed - Saturdays are lovely when one has nothing else planned (which hasn't happened to me in a while). I put my tie on (with all the small details like cuff-link buttons), my tweed jacket, my casquette, and my gloves. Coquettely, I made my way along the old streets - the old streets and old buildings predispose one to feel of a different age, of a different culture, of a different time, and of a different interest. And so, I became an art historian for a day - with the tweed jacket, without the elbow patches.

I walked in the museum of art in Brussels today and looked at the classic paintings exhibition. If you were to conjecture that the paintings should reflect the true state of mind of the time, the interest of people, their culture, their thoughts an their fears, their emotions and worries, and their joys, I think you'd have to conclude that spirituality (and by an extension religion) was the topic of the day. The old masters focused on depicting the familiar religious stories - familiar to anyone who has read the Bible (which was, at the time, the book, the story, the history - and yes, not everyone had read it because people couldn't read - but yes, they knew the stories). Or they would weave religious elements with angels, wings, bishops, the Holy Trinity, and ritualistic elements. If you knew the Bible, you knew the stories; if you knew the stories, you knew the paintings. And if you don't, you look with today's eyes: try to make sense of the people and the stories - their search to the eternal answer (what is the meaning of life - there, I've said it). And back then, religion gave them that answer. 

There is another topic that often comes up in the classic artists I see in the museum - lust and seduction. For time immemorial (again, see Bible, chapter 1 - creation), relationships between people (particularly romantic relationships) were of a curious topic for artists. In fact, it probably isn't an exaggeration to say that art exists because of love. And then came the renaissance, and the question of religion took second stage. But the arts didn't die - their expression just changed. It now depicts beauty, liberty, war, love (or lust, for the sceptic) itself. Religious expressions in paintings in the 17th and 18th century were no longer flat, no longer idealizing, no longer static. In Rubens' paintings each muscle is textural, each drop of sweat reflects light, each facial expression feels authentic and tangible. 

Art came about because people wanted to share their expressions and feelings toward another person or people in a tangible way. A way that speaks not only to the subjects or objects but to the entire world. Would there have been art, were there no love? And here you ask what about the commissioned art - was it also out of love? It was and it wasn't. It gave the commissioner the object he needed that they couldn't do themselves. And it is their love that drives the painter. Could the painter be just a tool as is the brush? Isn't he just the craftsman? Is he the mind that control the hand, while the patron is the heart? 

Photography is History

For well-over a month now, I've been using quite extensively the new Voithländer 35 mm f1.2 II lens. It is a superb lens - it is sharp, it is great to handle, it offers light sensitivity unbeatable in the 35 mm range, and fantastic contrast and color rendition. It is a fantastic black-and-white lens especially when paired up with the Leica M8's infrared sensitivity. And it made me think about what the lenses tell about the picture. 

We've often read about lenses that render vintage, or modern, or clinical, or that are great for color, or that offer surreal rendition, etc. The lenses that we use (figuratively and literally) create their own reality and have their own feel. That's what we refer to "vintage" when we talk about softer lenses. We use them because they capture our own expectation of the world back in those days - ghostly and desaturated. They have melancholic value because we want to live in that world - some of us, anyway. Their low contrast is for us a summary of a historic moment - calmed down, poised, and sometimes flatly boring. We become like the characters in "Midnight in Paris" who cannot live in their own time and look for a future or a past.

The lens is more than just a brush in the hands of the photographer. The lens is the intermediary inner eye, the intuition and the impulse. It is the brush but also the canvas on which we draw with light. It is the paint and the palette.  With a manual focus lens, the photographer is in absolute control of how impressionistic, Cezannian, Bensonian, Cartier-Bressonian, etc. the composition and appearance would be. Super-f lenses, opened to the fullest, gather light that can easily overwhelm the sensor – like a bucket of pain splashed on the canvas. These lensed are made for drawing at night – when each photon matters, when the human eye is not capable of seeing colors, and when people open up to you - by the fireplace, with a candle, under the fireworks.

Then we have a whole new world before our eyes. Colors and colorful people. Smiles and tears. Music and noise (no silence ever). Breath and stank. Toxicity and invigoration. Poets and lyrics. Begging for money and satisfaction without greed. Being of past, and present, and future. A Prokofiev and a Rachmaninov piano concerto – Bach doesn't fit at night but the Russian romantics and surrealists do. 

We are drawn to that world, as photographers. It is revealing, it is unseen. It is a secret. Perhaps, its allure is in its invisibility. Or maybe, photography is just the artist's attempt at escaping death, which often comes at night, in the dark, without us seeing. We all want our picture taken, our presence documented, our loved by our side. The fear of perpetual neglect is what has driven the artist for centuries. So what's so new with photography? Infinite reproducibility? And isn't it through photography that we try to live in another age? To move to the times which we like - recreating the ages, recreating the clothes, the make-up, recreate the greatest and most beautiful era. But isn't any one of them like that? Aren't we all trying to escape the present?

But life is a little unsatisfying. And that's why we need to document each and every part of it - the happy parts and the sad parts, the ones we want to forget and the ones we want to remember forever. But above all, we must document the ones we want to live in.