Of worn-out jeans and crappy cameras

Those of us of a certain age remember what it used to be like to buy and own a pair of blue jeans. They came in mostly one color (“blue”), one style (“jeans”), and one somewhat undesirable cut other than “regular” (“husky”). Worn right off of the rack, they appeared to be made of some sort of ballistic cotton that could stop a small-caliber rifle round, and were so stiff that we couldn’t bend our knees in them for the first few weeks. We didn’t fold them and put them away at night, we stood them up in the corner. We bought them six inches too long because, of course, they would shrink when first washed and because they would last so long that we would “grow into them”. And we loved our jeans. We looked forward to seeing what they looked like and how they fit each time they came out of the dryer, and we mourned their loss when, years later, time and Tide inevitably reduced them to a series of holes held together by mere threads. Jeans were a journey, not a destination; a promise, not a product. In the way they shrank, faded, and eventually ripped and disintegrated, they reflected the accumulation of our life’s adventures, our authentic experience.

Nowadays, of course, we often don’t just buy jeans, we buy “fashion jeans”. We buy them distressed, weathered, acid-washed, stone washed, sandblasted, belt-sanded and otherwise intentionally worn the hell out. We buy them already ripped and torn (perfectly of course) in the most stylish yet functional of locations. Like so much else in our post-modern smorgasbord of infinite choice and empty meaning, with our jeans we have traded the journey for the destination, the promise for the product. We want our jeans, and by extension ourselves, to look like they’ve been somewhere without the inconvenience of actually having to go there. We want them to look that way NOW and at whatever cost. With our fashion jeans, we are buying our own back story.

I call this phenomenon “Simulated Character”, and I was recently reminded of my fascination with it when I received a message and an attached photo from my friend and former student Swami. He was enrolled in the Street Photography workshop at NESOP, and was intrigued by his instructor’s Holga camera.

A Holga, for those of you who don’t already know, is a $20 toy camera made in China that accepts medium format (120 size) film. The body of the camera is made from flimsy black plastic that leaks light like a screen door, which is one part of its appeal to photographers. The other attraction is the camera’s plastic lens, which creates images that are somewhat sharp in the center, softer at the edges, and heavily vignetted. Each camera/lens combination has its own unique characteristics, and the result of all of this unpredictable optical and mechanical imperfection are photographs that can have a somewhat dreamy, distressed quality. Character, in other words, at least in the minds of some, but character that is imparted by the nature of the tool. Authentic character, if you will.

Swami loved the look of the Holga images, but being a digital photographer, he was not crazy about the idea of buying a film camera. One of the great advantages of digital technology is how completely it has replaced the need for chemical photo processing, darkrooms, color labs, everything. But the best way to appreciate the special quality of Holga images is to process and print the film yourself, and Swami really wanted nothing to do with any of that.

So he went a’googling, and, sure enough, quickly came up with a set of Photoshop actions that apply a “Holga effect” to any digital image. He sent me the first image at the top of this post, and asked me if I thought it was truly “Holga-like”. Attaching one of my own “real” Holga pictures in response (the bottom one), I sent him this:

“Yep, it sort of looks like a Holga shot, soft and vignetted at the edges... I guess one question I would ask myself is, ‘do I want to make my digital images LOOK like they were shot with a Holga, or do I want the experience of actually SHOOTING with a Holga?’ For me, it would be the latter.”

... to which he responded

“I'm actually happy with my Holga-like pics processed through Photoshop.”

...to which I responded...

Well, I didn’t respond. I didn’t quite know what to say, and I’m still not sure I do. I’m left with the unsettling realization that either Swami is missing the whole point about using a toy camera in the first place, or I’m missing the bigger point that “it’s the picture, stupid”. I’m beginning to think it’s a little of both.

But since I’m the seasoned professional photographer and teacher, and since it’s my blog, let’s say I’m right, and Swami doesn’t get it. In my workshops, I try to make the point that shooting film is about guessing, and shooting digital is about knowing (at least it is after one learns how to do it properly). A Holga is the ultimate “point and pray” device. It delivers no guarantees but lots of surprises, exactly the opposite of what should be coming out of your digital camera. In other words, let’s say that the whole reason to shoot with that silly little kiddy camera is its “ANTI-DIGITALness”. When we get a cool picture out of a Holga, it’s FUN, it feels like a gift from the photo gods! If we accept all that, then we also have to accept the fact that a Holga image looks the way it does because it just can’t look any other way. Now, to my pea brain at least, that is a whole lot different than taking an extremely high quality digital image (which, incidentally, also looks the way it does because of the tool that made it) and running a software action on it that tries to make it look like something it isn’t. Both of the images you see here have character, maybe even similar character, but from a process standpoint (and process is really what this all comes down to) one is what it is and the other is what it isn’t. Or it is what it wants to be, not what it has to be. One is authentic, one is simulated, but both are photographs and both are interesting.

So, then, here's the big question: should we really care about HOW a picture was made, or is it better to care THAT a picture was made?

Think about that, will you? And do get back to me with your answer. I need to figure this out, and fast.

I should go now. My new jeans are in the dryer.