Instant Gratification
Experimenting with instant film
I feel a little dirty.
I have abandoned my large and medium format cameras and have come to question my long-held beliefs in the principles of pure photography as laid down by the titans of the West Coast Photographic Movement. I haven’t touched any of my other cameras since I started shooting with a Fujifilm instant camera in November. Not my Mamiya C330 or my Arca Swiss view camera.
Setting aside the hyperbole…
Instant film is sweeping the nation;
Instax film was the highest selling camera item on Amazon.com during the holidays.
And I’ve been trying to figure out why I caught the instant film bug.
Photography, often neither an additive or subtractive art form, is usually a threefold process
Up to this point, I have couched my work in a term that photographer Edward Burtynsky coined — “the contemplated moment” — in contrast to Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment.” Burtynsky means to describe the slower process with his 4×5 and 8×10 view cameras. Because of the camera weight and numerous steps involved before exposing film, one is habituated into a state of accumulated photographic intentions. That is, tending to do a lot of the compositional, conceptual and camera placement deliberations “in the mind’s eye” as Ansel Adams would say, prior to photographing.
I have been working with large format film cameras since 2005, and felt that I achieved competence with their technique in 2009 during a trip to the Midwest to photograph industrial architecture and create portraits for my American Traditions project.
Despite my attention grabbing in the beginning of this post, I’m by no means abandoning large format, but my reaction to using the instant camera is illuminating the motivations behind my practice and opening up new means for expression.
Let’s take this shot for example:
Here the photographer has added his Instax print over a surface and photographed it. This creates a dialogue between the subject of the picture and the material with which it is combined, or overlaid. This additive technique is interesting me because of my background where the conceptual framework of a photograph lies between images within a series rather than a dialogue between two different picture elements within a single frame.
Photography, often neither an additive or subtractive art form, is usually a threefold process: Capture the picture, edit it for impact, and place it within a series. The identity of the original solitary picture is rarely altered. But when I modify the surface with another image, the additive element often reinforces meaning, and the white border found in the Instax material proves to be a simple and effective element to indicate duality.
“Let reason govern thy lament.” – Marcus, Titus Andronicus
UPDATE
Since I originally wrote this post, one of these overlays was awarded Best in Show by Juror Millee Tibbs at the Ann Arbor Art Center’s Art Now 2016: New Directions in Contemporary Photography exhibition. Millee’s work is photo-based but she goes beyond the literal and explores the limits of the medium — so it is an honor to have had her selection. Below is the selected work.
