It’s a New York thing to use those old cabs at a wedding instead of a limo. You know – the checker cabs – the type you see in the old movies. And, I’ve gotta say, they’re pretty cool the first time you see them. Here’s the funny thing, though. I’m looking at a picture of a couple a week ago, and they got in a regular cab to get to their reception. And it occurs to me that in 30 years, when they or their children look at those pictures, they won’t see a modern cab. They’ll see a vintage cab from 2011. “Hey, remember those old cabs they used to use back then?” For all I know, people will rent 2011 cabs instead of using their teleportation machines to show up at their weddings.
The other day, I was looking through Jocelyn Lee’s latest book, Nowhere But Here. Soul searing and quite wonderful, I took a mental note that some of the images had “that look.” You know the one I’m talking about. The film look, which is both surging and waning at once. And as I was thinking about it, this question kept popping into my head. Might the current digital look be the vintage of 2030? After all, when everyone shot film, no one thought they were doing a special “film look.”
History is anything but granular. You lose a certain amount of perspective as time passes. Memory does strange things, and what starts off as awful often becomes nostalgic, while what’s nostalgic often becomes awful. Bell bottoms, anyone? It came, it went, it came, and it went. Maybe it will come back. Maybe it won’t. But the point is that context is key. Without the bookend of the future to anchor the present, we can only guess as to the value of what we do. But we can be sure that some things will become iconic, while others fade into the distance.
Now this isn’t to suggest we should all go out an buy the crappiest cameras we can, but simply that there may well be something very special in that crappiness that we don’t see because we’re stuck in the present. There is undoubtedly a signature to current cameras – there always is – whether it be resolution, lens characteristics, noise artifacts, processing styles, curve profiles, blown out whites, noisy blacks, or some characteristic we don’t see. To us, these traits are annoying limitations. But to future generations, they could well be definitive of vintage digital photography. 20 years down the road, we might all be installing the latest plug-ins to create that 2011 look. And the cameras that will possess the most vintage goodness from the eyes of someone of 2030 aren’t likely to be the high-powered SLRs. They are outliers, the most successful escapees from the imprint of modern technology. I’d suggest we look to point and shoots or cell phones.
People talk of neutrality and longevity, and there are no doubt things that last, but making that assessment is anything but easy, especially where nostalgia comes into play. We’ll simply know when we know. But we live in a unique time and pursue a unique medium, where everything is in flux as we struggle to adjust to the breakneck freight train of technology. So whether you shoot on a cell phone, a Hipstamatic, an S95, or a D3, there are opportunities that abound. Don’t worry so much about what’s best. Just embrace it, push things, explore, and challenge. See where it will take you. As for the rest, only time will tell.
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