July 08, 2004
Lomography?
I've just stumbled upon this thing called lomography.
I think it's a load of crap.
These people are talking about spontaneous street photography as though it's something new, and, apparently, dependent on a certain type of low-tech camera.
Apparently these people have never heard of Gary Winogrand or his famous quote:
"I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs."
I spent an entire semester at SVA doing this sort of photography, and admittedly it turned into my favorite work in school. So, I understand these people's enthusiasm for the style and the freedom it makes you feel.
What I can't stand is the way they talk about this style/method/etc. in such cultish terms. How it's been turned into some kind of movement, made even worse by the fact that the name is tied to some product. The Lomo folks must be loving this.
So you don't look through the viewfinder when you take pictures. Great. So they're low-tech, ala millions of Holga (the refuge of every 2nd year photography student in art school) pictures before yours. Great. So these pictures are entirely personal. Great. Then why do you feel the need to yap on about them and put them up on the web so much?
A lot of these lomographs (it pains me to even think that word) are not as unplanned as they seem. They all look like pictures taken by that annoying kid in your (again) 2nd year photography class that is taking candids and off-center/kilter images to "break down the conventions of what is thought to be photography, journalism, and art."
Shut up. Now, get over yourself, and go take pictures that are really personal, not just stolen records of the most mundane parts of your life. (Really, I think all this is from a fear to raise the camera to their faces in public. To thrust the camera into view or admit to someone else - a stranger perhaps - that they are taking their picture. I'm sure you could psychoanalyze that more, but I won't.)
How come all this "personal" work has so much impersonal crap in it? A woman sitting next to a table with a lone coffee mug on it?
Oh wow. Genius. If you're not Nan Goldin, keep it to yourself. At least her pictures are of the interesting parts of her life.
Posted by jtnt at July 8, 2004 07:28 PM in Blather | TrackBack