I can't stand them anymore

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

I can't stand anymore all those wannabe artists who think that it's enough to use a holga to become an interesting photographer. Who go to the big cities to take time and time and time again the same old urban photos that are the copy of a copy of a copy of copy, and think that to "aesthetize" it by adding excess saturation, or grunge effects, or vignetting, or soft focus, is enough to make the photos artworks.
Who don't care about the substance of the subject, but only about the iconic status of the subject (trendy/not trendy).
Who are full af aesthetism and poor of substance.
Who drown their photos in Photoshop soup because they are unable to handle the pure image.

I am an anticonformist to the extreme, in this age of pseudo gothic post modern baroquism I want to go the opposite way, the most essential, nude, crude photography, zeroing the postwork to the absolute essential, relying on what is in front of me only, and on my ability or lack thereof to interact with the scene.

Sorry for the rant - I received the nth invitation to a urban Holga photo exhibition and the nausea got hold of me.
Rolling Eyes

nemesis101 · Expire: 2015-01-22

Now now..

Calm down

Take a deep breath

and be grateful you are a photographer with a great eye and some good kit, and they are sad characters who mistake grunge for good - you should treat them with the same compassion you would an elderly relative who has a mind half gone.. Pat them on the head and send them on their way! lol

Doug

Smile

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

There is still so many people who believe they are discovering the avant-garde... "See, I take photographs with TOY CAMERAS!" and all the radical-chic, snob-pop intellectuals to go "ooh... the redefinition of the industrial object into an art instrument...".... somebody should give them all books with the birth dates of Man Ray and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, to let them know they are old as Noah. Rolling Eyes

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9097 Location: Houston, Texas

Look at it this way, Orio -- if it weren't for the Holga craze, medium format film might have soon become an endangered species. So, I say, let them click away, oblivious to "true" photographic art, as long as they take lots of photos.

nemesis101 · Expire: 2015-01-22

Hear hear!

Smile

Doug

Seele · Joined: 17 Apr 2009 Posts: 741 Location: Sydney Australia

Those who cannot photograph properly would use excuses to legitimize and justify their meagre efforts, and the Holga crowd, especially the "Lomo" crowd, had found such legitimization and justification. The down side, of course, is that this form of justification is getting to be seen in the mainstream, like, if you use film then you must be one of the Holga types, and the film image has to be really poor in quality!

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9097 Location: Houston, Texas

Personally, I just can't get all that worked up about it. These people have no perspective and it isn't my purpose in life to educate them. Film has a noble, 180 (or so) year tradition. Examples of superb photographic art are legion.

It probably bears keeping in mind that the artsy-fartsy types who have recently discovered emulsion via the Holga have recently discovered emulsion period. I'll wager most of them have only shot digital prior to their Holga purchases. Or maybe they bought disposable 35mm cameras -- which actually take better pictures than Holgas do Cool

. They have no perspective. So when the clueless flap their jaws, just point out the simple facts to them. And then walk away, cuz chances are there isn't anything they will have to say beyond that point that you'll be interested in hearing anyway.

Farside · Expire: 2013-12-27

The thing I find slightly annoying about the Holga/Lomo movement is that the utter crap that's produced would have been slung in the bin by a genuine H/L user way back when. Back in the day, when most ordinary working-class family cameras were Kodak Box Brownies or similar, there were millions of perfectly adequate photographs taken of family events, scenery and odd items of interest, most of which were reasonably exposed and even in focus much of the time.
For the H/L movement to attempt to reproduce what they regard as 'back to the roots' photography in such a poor fashion is nothing but a slap in the face and unutterably patronising to millions of camera users of the past.

Nesster · Expire: 2014-02-20

I feel a bit more benign towards the lomon/helga folks. I mean lemon/holga. Lomo/Holga. that's it Wink

I do think there can be some craft and knowledge involved - yes, very limited, but still - for some practitioners, in the manipulation of the various effects and so on.

And for some, the Holga turns out to be a gateway camera, perhaps to a Yashica Mat and then...

The Lomo movement I feel is a natural and necessary balancing aesthetic to the pixel peeped ultra clean digital. We do see its effect on modern art photography - or documentary photography - where professional quality real photo gear is used... and the 'artist' works hard on his/her 'vision'.

Yeah, I can be snarky about the vision thing, but on the other hand I also think the vision movement is a valid and good thing.

The image manipulation stuff is also -for some- the entry into other types of photography. Take myself for example, I learned photoshop on Elements 1.0 where I set out to break all the rules. Used each tool to cause the very condition it was designed to fix. I found - and still find - the process very relaxing, mesmerizing even, and one that uncorked some creativity I'd bottled some 20 years prior.

Being an amateur and dilettante in the old senses of the words, I feel free and entitled to dabble in the quasiLomo and quasiWeston worlds, simultaneously. Both can provide challenges and rewards. And doing both can provide the insights necessary to see into a photographer's technique - to at least have an idea of the effort involved.

(Does an excellent image: technically (however defined) top notch, well composed and presented, and with compelling subject matter; does such an image lose value if it turns out to be the process of automation and shooting 1,000 frames, and does it gain value if it turns out to be the result of 35 years of careful study and practice, on a single plate with every aspect of the process controlled and thought out?)

man I do babble on.

One last bit: daughter wanted a Holga last year because a lot of the kids at photo camp had raved about them and used them. So I got her one. She has used it exactly twice - and the second time I forced on her by putting the damn film in it myself.

Carlsson · Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 793 Location: Portugal

I also don't get this Lomoism, not my cup of tea. It's like driving a bad car which accelerates on his own will.
Another chinese invasion...

But hey, as long as they buy film I don't care.

poilu · Expire: 2019-08-29

I have a friend photographer who liked holga, he show me dozen of pics
I have to recognize that in good hand this toy can make interesting pics
but it is just a fashion, many want to try everything and after 2 or 3 months they switch to a new gadget

LucisPictor · Expire: 2013-12-03

"Oh, and I thought that everybody turns into a genius artist the very moment he uses a Holga!
That's why I have ordered one. And it doesn't work? I guess, I need to cancel my order immediately." Wink

Orio, I can understand your rant. I think that everybody should use whatever he wants and be happy with it, but we should be saved from the work of people who think they are the best ever. I totally agree to you, Orio:
- Using a Holga does not mean you're an artist. (Some time ago itt meant you were rather inventive, but not today.)
- Shooting on medium format does not mean you're an artist, either.
- Neither does shooting on film mean that.

An artist can produce fanscinating images no matter which format or cam he uses. To most real artist it is not even important which medium they use. They have something to show, something special that nobody has thought of before them.

I remember a conversation I was listening to some time ago:

"What do you want to be later?"
--- "I want to become an artist."
"You don't 'become' an artist, you 'are' one."

I like that.

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

Yes, you made a good point Carsten.
What I hate is the "fashion-snobbish-artistry" thing. Such as:

1) you make gritty defocused desaturated photos with your Polaroid potraying your naked legs when you get out of the shower... BUM you're an artist who discovers how the pure truth is naked blah blah blah

2) you take exactly the same subject with a good camera: the photos are trash and you are a time loser.

All because using Polaroid is anticonformist and pseudopopulist and it's the revenge of how the communist art is superior because it takes cameras that in the 60s and 70s were elitist cameras and the symbol of rich bourgeoisie who used them to photograph their immoral reality while today the bourgeoise has got rid of them to get digital cameras and now the socialist artists take them from the trash bin and use them to make popular art as a revenge of the common people blah blah blah...

I mean there are some artistic circles that are so imbued with such rhetoric and populistic crap that they don't value the content of the image anymore - only the status symbol of anticonformist medium.
And by doing so they don't understand that they put themselves on the same level of Britney Spears that buys a Leica camera not caring at all about photography but only because it's a status symbol.

Both extremes are crap for me: the total absence of artistic spirit and ideas (consumism) and the ideologically elitist art (communist art).

A G Photography · Joined: 11 May 2008 Posts: 1480 Location: Bologna - Italy

The problem is pretty simple imho.

If you have a good idea that needs a toy camera to be put into reality then use a toy camera.

If you have a shitty idea you can use a Linhof Master Technika to render it and it will end up in a shitty image.

Problem is that there are very few artists around and a lot of shitty ideas.

Attila · Expire: 2025-11-18

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

Attila · Expire: 2025-11-18

A G Photography · Joined: 11 May 2008 Posts: 1480 Location: Bologna - Italy

It's the same for people who think that a canon 1dsmkIII and a complete set of L lenses would make them incredible shooter.

Unfortunately for them and lucky for the others cameras and lenses are just instruments, the images are in our brain, we actually compose them or search for them, depending which kind of photography one follows.

Then a shooter, like a woodworker or a painter, choose the better instrument suited to realize his idea. I never heard a painter telling than his masterwork was inspired by the brush he used...

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

Attila · Expire: 2025-11-18

In today's art nothing related to talent just one of businesses nothing else , who can control media those people select who is top artist who is don't pretty simple.

Paint title is "Autism".

This is an un-finished picture from my friend, so don't try to start "pixel pipping" he is a talented artist I believe, but I also believe he will never earn any single cents from his paints. I saw many ugly paints at exhibitions and in media. A 5 yrs old kid will be paint better than those....

A G Photography · Joined: 11 May 2008 Posts: 1480 Location: Bologna - Italy

But there are worse things than Holga lovers... now if you don't take a shot of an irrelevant subject against an insignificant and cloud covered sky using the P program of the camera you don't stand a chance to be considered an artist.

Go and look by yourself:

http://www.ilovethatphoto.net/2009/12/07/interview-david-power/

http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2009/12/frank_schirrmeister.html

and examples can continue endlessly...

Actually I don't buy anymore Zoom magazine (it's an italian magazine dedicated to artistic photography) as I usually ended up with about 1 or 2 images I liked out of hundreds. If I want to see good photography I buy Vogue or some other fashion magazine, at least there I can find photos from people who knows how to press the shutter button and use lights.

kuuan · Expire: 2014-12-26

I agree Orio.

It seems to be a fact that many people have a liking for newly taken photos which have a color quality resp. are faulty as if they had been taken with a cheap camera 50 years ago. I find the fact that this kind of photo have a certain coolness factor interesting, but of course it is nonsense that such photos almost automatically are heightend to be art.

I like street photography. There are many street photos nowadays which are made possible because of fast consecutive shots of smallish cameras with fast and good autofocus. These 'catches' IMO rather show off the technical possibilities of modern cameras but less the skill of the photographer and thus harldy ever can qualify as art as well.

Nesster · Expire: 2014-02-20

I'd like to draw attention to some underlying assumptions about photography, and what makes it 'art' or 'good'.

There is a school of thought that careful preparation, well thought out exposure and composition, with equipment of high standard makes for 'good' photography. High mimetic / high craftmanship.

Taking several photos, many many photos, with casual attention to technique somehow isn't 'good' photography.

However: evidence is that several well known and influential, traditional photographers in fact took hundreds if not thousands of photographs, with more or less attention to the technical details, and then spent months boiling them down to the handful or so deemed worthy.

The inventor of the Decisive Moment was like this, as was Robert Frank, just to pick a couple.

I submit the following (which I admit I'm not good at, but my daughter is): an essential part of 'good' photography is the accumulation of images and then the selection of but a few.

Further, I submit that with traditional photography, what is now known as post processing is also an essential part of the whole. The characteristics of the materials require this: photo paper does not have the latitude of film, for example, and thus in the printing another set of selections must be made. Contrast, dodging and burning, etc are all done as a matter of course.

While selectivity I feel is essential to good photography, the presence of post production and the usage of technique by itself are not essential.

---

All that said, the instant 'art' nostalgia cool factor is suspect. Much of it is fashion - and a nostalgic return to the limitations of medium we used to curse and work hard to avoid. Kind of like the addition of record scratches to digital music.

These are interesting questions to me, for why do I enjoy shooting with antiquated equipment - stuff I would not have touched nor considered 30 years ago?

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

LucisPictor · Expire: 2013-12-03