When I refer to the term ‘true photography’ I am referencing to what I believe is the pure version of the art form, something that has been stripped of the iphone camera and the business endorsed instagram posts.

Digital, film, polaroid and even disposable cameras have this ability to see and express the world in a richer and deeper way. With the purpose of contrasting new forms of media against old I wanted to focus on how past modes of media, and in particular film cameras, can tell us a story of life itself. I also wanted to explore the ways in which this older form of media has the power to see another layer to both humanity and the world around us.

To begin with, the process involved with film cameras is as much about the final result as it is about the steps it takes you to get there. When you spend a lot of time working with film you realise that each measure involved is as imperative and important for your outcome as the one before. A roll of film suddenly becomes this precious, fragile, and special thing. Which, for me, then translates to both my photographs and my subjects. When I look at my final photos I always have this sudden and intense appreciation for the preciousness and impermanent state of both the people and places I have captured.

For me the fascination and allurement of film photography is how it can tell us something else, something we might have been missing, about our own realities . Be it beauty, sadness, joy, energy, love, confusion, deterioration, whatever. Photographs not only freeze time but they can show us what our lives look like from an alternative and unassuming perspective. A shimmery surreal yet incredibly real expression of the human condition and the cycle of life.

As iconic photographer Platon often accentuated in his episode of ‘Abstract: the art of design’, photographs can be a means of capturing something more than just the physical flesh and bone of a person. They have the ability to unveil spirit, to tap into the soul, and to tell a story through visual language. The manner and method to which Planton approaches his art form and photographs his subjects is incredibly intriguing. In a very simple and elegant way he manages to connect with whomever he is photographing and expose the raw beauty and vulnerability of the human condition.

Platon emphasised his own psychological need for graphic simplicity in his work and maintained that regardless of how great or bad your tools may be, the focus and impact of your work needs to come from who or what it is you are capturing.

Garry Winogrand is another photographer whose images manage to illustrate and illuminate the complexity and beauty of society and humanity. He predominantly documented American life from the 1950s through to the 1980s and his photographs tell us intricate stories of joy, chaos, love and loss that really epitomize that beautiful madness of the world around us.

The beauty and delicacy of the human form and the ever spinning cycle of life is something that ought to be captured properly and delicately. I believe that older modes of media, like film photography, have the power and ability do just this.

 

-Scott Dadich. (2017). Abstract: The Art of Design. [Online Video]. 1 February 2017. Available from: https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80057883. [Accessed: 1 March 2017].

-Rubinfien, L, 2013. Garry Winogrand. 1st ed. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Yale University Press.

-Hinkson, M, 2016. Imaging Identity: Media, memory and portraiture in the digital age. 1st ed. Acton ACT 2601: ANU Press.