An Anachronistic Society: on the use of the analog during the digital age

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An Anachronistic Society Bolieiro, 2

Abstract

Since the late 1950s, analog technology began to be replaced by digital technology, leading to the start of the digital age. Although we are presently living in the digital age and most of our forms of technology and communication are correspondingly digital, there has been a conspicuous proliferation and return to analog technologies in the arts and culture. With an increasing fetishization of retro and analog, photographers raised during the digital age still make use of analog photography. This thesis investigates this fetishization by examining the potentials of instant and film photography that attract digital photographers and how they approach them. The aesthetics of nostalgia and analog are construed to assess how they can be applied to the digital and to consider how they are marketed. Materiality as a potential of instant photography is subsequently considered along with how it has been used by female artists as a self-empowering tool. Further, the potential of cinematic gaze in film photography and how it applies the quirky sensibility is considered, which leads to the study of how the cinematic gaze is equally used to redefine how the female body is viewed. Thus, this thesis seeks to comprehend several potentials of analog photography such as nostalgic value, materiality and cinematic use and how they have been appropriated by society, the market and artists.

Keywords: Analog photography, nostalgia, retromania, retromediation, materiality, photo-object, cinematic gaze, cinematic photography, quirky photography.

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First, I would like to thank my thesis advisor Dr. Ali Shobeiri for his helpful remarks, guidance, and encouragement throughout the writing process of this thesis.

I would also like to acknowledge the support and useful observations of all my friends and classmates who have heard from me sentences beginning or ending with the words “my master thesis” more than they might have wished.

I must also express gratitude to my parents and grandparents for always giving me the opportunity to embark on adventures such as this one.

And of course, I want to thank all the inventors and contributors to the development of photography for creating a sublime medium through which I better comprehend the world around me.

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Abstract ... 2

Acknowledgements ... 3

Introduction ... 5

Chapter 1... 10

Generation Nostalgia: The Impact Of Retromania On Photography ... 10

1.1. Nostalgia: From Private To Collective, From Factual To Fabricated. ... 11

1.2. The Commodification Of Nostalgia: From Retromania To The Hipster. ... 16

1.3. Retromediation And The Aesthetics Of Nostalgia. ... 22

1.4. Self-Induced Nostalgia: Its Weight On Identity And Aestheticizing One’s Life... 31

Conclusion ... 35

Chapter 2... 36

The Lure Of Instant Photography: From “Gimmick” To Empowering Tool ... 36

2.1 A Brief History Of Instant Photography: The Polaroid As A Toy ... 37

2.2. The Photo-Object: A Moldering Memorial ... 40

2.3. The Event Of Instant Photography: From Party Embalmer To Being The Party ... 51

2.4. A Sui Generis Photograph: Instant Photography As An Empowering Tool... 54

Conclusion ... 64

Chapter 3... 66

The (Quirky) Cinematic Gaze: Film Photography Made Filmic. ... 66

3.1. The Cinematic Gaze And The Cinematic Society ... 68

3.2. Cinematic Photography: From The Photo-Novel To Faux Unit Still Photography ... 71

3.3. In A Quirky, Dreamy Analog World: Quirky Cinema Applied To Photography ... 85

Conclusion ... 99

Conclusion ... 101

Further Research ... 106

Bibliography ... 108

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Since the late 1950s, analog technology began to be replaced by digital technology, leading to the Digital Revolution. Although we are presently living in the digital age and most of our forms of technology and communication are correspondingly digital, there has been a

noticeable proliferation and return to analog technologies in the arts and culture. Scrolling through Instagram, a platform that showcases the current digitization and immateriality of art, one can nonetheless identify works created with analog techniques or made to appear old and analog through editing. There seems to be an increasing retromania and fetishization of analog nostalgia.1

The contrast between analog and digital photography has been the subject of a long debate. Authors such as media theorist William J. Mitchell referred to the move from analog to digital as a shift from a photographic era to a post-photographic era.2_{Since the language of} digital photography is identical to the language used in the production of animated pictures and graphics, several authors question whether the term photography should be used for digital images.3_{Media theorist Lev Manovich has even referred to digital cinema’s manual} construction of images as a sub-genre of painting that can no longer be said to be an indexical media technology.4_{Some authors (e.g. Mitchell) focus on the disparities between analog and} digital photography in light of their technical features and production process, while others

1_{“Originally in anthropology, [fetishism is] the attribution of mysterious or supernatural qualities to material}

objects which then become the object of idolatry” in Daniel Chandler and Rod Munday, “Fetishism,” in A

Dictionary of Media and Communication (Oxford University Press, 2011),

http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199568758.001.0001/acref-9780199568758-e-0968.

2_{Hilde Van Gelder and Helen Westgeest, Photography Theory in Historical Perspective, 1st ed. (Chichester,}

West Sussex ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 7.

3_{Gelder and Westgeest, Photography Theory in Historical Perspective, 8.}

4_{T Corrigan, P White, and M Mazaj, “Lev Manovich: ‘What Is Digital Cinema?’ (2002),” in Critical Visions in}

Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj

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highlight the similarities and the final product. Digital media theorist Sarah Kember argues that there is no point in worrying about the loss of the real through digital production. It is irrelevant whether the image’s production is mechanical or digital, as any representation, photographic or not, creates merely an “image-idea of the real.”5_{Tom Gunning concluded his} article “What’s the Point of an Index? Or, Faking Photographs” claiming that it is necessary to investigate photography’s capacity to capture something’s presence independently from the model of the index. According to Gunning, “the actual visual experience” of photographs needs to be further examined.6_{Although this thesis also raises indexicality, the main aim is to} examine that “actual visual experience” together with the materiality, nostalgic affect and remembrance value of analog.

In “Analogue Nostalgia and the Aesthetics of Digital Remediation”, media and culture theorist Dominik Schrey similarly discusses the trend of nostalgia and present-day media culture’s romanticizing and fetishizing of analog media.7_{Schrey examines how the} “symptoms” of analog nostalgia can be located in each area of culture and society. For instance, in films such as The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011) and Hugo (Martin

Scorsese, 2011) in which “not only the artistic qualities of early cinema but also the celluloid filmstrip as its material basis” are celebrated, or in the context of avant-garde art as “most successful contemporary installation artists display a deep affection for outdated analogue media” by completing their exhibitions with some form of archaic technology.8_{Schrey also} observes how several digital works “quote certain characteristics typically associated with analogue” through “digital remediation of analogue aesthetics”, which is a type of ‘analog

5_{Corrigan, White, and Mazaj, “Lev Manovich: What is digital cinema?”}

6_{Tom Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index? Or, Faking Photographs” Digital Aesthetics, Nordic Research}

on Media and Communication Review, no. 1–2 (2004), 48.

7_{Dominik Schrey, “Analogue Nostalgia and the Aesthetics of Digital Remediation,” in Media and Nostalgia, by}

Katarina Niemeyer, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 27.

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nostalgia’ as designated by media theoretician Laura Marks.9_{This observation was the point} of departure and one of the core motivations for this research, as analog aesthetics are added to digital photography and analog photographs are anyhow mostly digitized and transferred to the digital space. Therefore, it becomes noteworthy to investigate how analog aesthetics can be a beginning line for analog fetishization. Additionally, it is relevant to research not only which potentials of analog photography attract and are fetishized by digital age photographers, but also how these potentials are engaged with. Since I deem it essential to make this examination from a more cultural perspective, I will consider not only fine art and professional photographers but also popular and mass media’s commodification and

appropriation of analog aesthetics.

My research began by selecting the two types of analog photography that appear to be the most popular in both artistic and amateur photography: instant photography was selected based on its prominence at events and film photography based on its overall popularity and wide presence in both the digital gallery (Instagram) and the physical gallery (museums). Then I examined and selected three main potentials of these trends: the nostalgic value of analog aesthetics, the immediate materiality of instant photography and its use as a memorial, and the prevalent use of fiction and cinematic gaze in film photography.

This thesis comprises three chapters. The primary objective of the first chapter is to examine how analog photography can enhance and induce nostalgia through its aesthetics and how these are exploited. Additionally, how analog’s nostalgic connotations are used for the construction and aestheticization of one’s identity. Firstly, the chapter outlines both private and collective nostalgia and examines how they can be factual or fabricated. The sociology of nostalgia will be assessed with auxiliary bibliography by sociologist Fred Davis,

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along with critic Simon Reynolds’ studies of retro-obsession and the retro industry.

Furthermore, to explore the concept of fabricated nostalgia, researcher Alison Landsberg’s concept of ‘prosthetic memory’ will be considered. The chapter will then investigate the commodification of nostalgia and how it influences media. Successively, it will be considered how, in addition to using analog, retromania can be fulfilled in digital media through retromediation – a term derived from new media researchers Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s concept of remediation. Lastly, after describing nostalgic and analog aesthetics, it will be studied how these are linked to self-induced nostalgia and how they can create and aestheticize one’s identity.

The second chapter proposes to uncover how materiality can source the resurgence of instant photography and how it has been approached. Firstly, the chapter will briefly look at the history of polaroid and its initial place as a gimmick neglected by professional

photographers. Then, under the framework of the materiality turn, instant photography will be considered as a photo-object directly related to memory to grasp the impact of its materiality. To do so, cultural theorist Peter Buse’s “The Polaroid Image as Photo-Object” will be used as auxiliary bibliography, along with art historian Geoffrey Batchen’s Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance. Additionally, the concept of metapicture and self-referentiality in photography will be discussed in an attempt to better understand instant photography’s existence as an object. Following the study of its materiality, instant photography’s connotation with events will be explored. Considering Peter Buse’s

arguments, photography and the concept of ‘Cinema of Attractions’ will be equated and the theory will be tested using examples - this parallel is essential to understand instant

photography as an event in itself. Bearing in mind the ideas of art critic John Berger on the distinction between nude and naked, by analyzing Rita Lino’s naked polaroids, the impact of instant photography’s materiality and irreproducibility on self-portraits will be investigated.

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The third chapter focuses on the use of film photography to create cinematic photographs and the impact of the cinematic gaze on the meaning of photographs.

Additionally, the chapter examines the notion of quirky sensibility used in film in the context of (cinematic) photography. Primarily, sociologist Norman K. Denzin’s The Cinematic Society will be considered for assessing what the cinematic gaze and society are and their influence by and on media. To better comprehend its impact, the concept of cinematic gaze will be coupled with philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s ideas on employing narrative to describe one’s life. Fictional narrative in photography will be studied and compared in the photo-novel and the singular cinematic photograph. The series Films I Never Made and Pretty Youth, by photographer Glashier, will be analyzed to understand cinematic photography and, with the help of philosophy professor Amy Coplan’s “Film, Literature and Non-Cognitive Affect”, to comprehend how cinematic photography can cause affect. Considering the theories and concepts of critic and essayist Roland Barthes and linguist Clive Scott, additional elements such as titles and captions and their impact on a cinematic photograph’s narrative will be assessed. The chapter will finally explore how cinematic photography has incorporated the ‘quirky sensibility’, a term used by film scholar James McDowell to define and analyze films such as those of director Wes Anderson. To do so, a comparison will be made between Wes Anderson’s films and Alex Prager’s photographs.

I conclude this thesis by examining how these various potentials of analog photography relate to one another and their impact on contemporary visual culture.

Thereafter, I suggest further research outcoming primarily from my discoveries concerning the relationship between hauntology and analog aesthetics, analog photography as a form of play, and on questioning if there can already be nostalgia for the early digital.

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Generation Nostalgia: The Impact of Retromania on Photography

“it is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia” Susan Sontag, On Photography (2001)

One of the triggers for the resurfacing of analog photography among (young) photographers during the digital age might be the contemporary fetishization of the old itself – a retromania and internal nostalgia for what one has lived, so much as not lived. The photograph will always be a nostalgic item and activity, as it captures and traps a moment in time which can never be re-lived and merely reminisced. Thus, how analog photography can both promote and induce nostalgia must be explored to understand how it may attract digital age

photographers. Additionally, how this nostalgic potential fulfills retromania and is used to aestheticize one’s life.

This chapter will firstly analyze how nostalgia can be defined and how it can be both private and collective, factual or fabricated. Furthermore, to assess the concept of fabricated nostalgia, the notion of ‘prosthetic memory’ will be studied. This chapter will then

investigate the commodification of nostalgia, since it is fundamental to see how it is marketed and how, through its commodification, it influences media such as photography. The concept of retromania will then be further explored by considering its relation to hipster subculture. Thereafter, a fashion photoshoot for Kodak’s clothing line that is targeted at analog-obsessed teenagers will be analyzed to illustrate nostalgia’s commodification. Further, this chapter will examine how analog-obsession can be transferred to digital media by defining retromediation and illustrating it through the analysis of an editing app offering photographs analog

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linked with self-induced nostalgia, thereby observing their weight on forming identity and aestheticizing one’s life. To accomplish this, considering sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of representation, simulacra and simulation, along with philosopher Guy Debord’s notions on a society of the spectacle, the importance of imagery and the priority given to visual representations rather than the real will be considered. The question is therefore more about how the visual spectacle created by one’s use of analog and nostalgic aesthetics can relate to the formation and aestheticization of one’s identity.

1.1. Nostalgia: From Private To Collective, From Factual To Fabricated.

Nostalgia as concept and word was developed in the 17th century by the physician Johannes Hofer to define a condition distressing Swiss mercenaries on long tours of military duty. As sociologist Fred Davis describes in Yearning For Yesterday: A Sociology Of Nostalgia, “Nostalgia is from the Greek nostos, to return home, and algia, a painful condition – thus, a painful yearning to return home.”10_{Hence, originally, nostalgia concerned an urge to return} across space, instead of across time. According to music journalist and critic Simon

Reynolds, who studies retro-obsession and retro music industry in the 21st_{century, nostalgia} progressively shed its geographical connotations and turned into a temporal condition.

Nostalgia is no longer an ache for “the lost motherland” but a longing for a “halcyon lost time in one's life”, and both an individual emotion and “a collective longing for a happier (…) more innocent age.”11_{While original nostalgia’s cure was to simply return home, the only} remedy for modern nostalgia would be time traveling. By the middle of the 20th_century, nostalgia was considered a universal emotion rather than a pathology: it could concern

10_{Fred Davis, Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (New York: London: Free Press; Collier}

Macmillan, 1979), 2.

11_{Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past, 1st ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus}

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individuals or a complete society.12_{Fred Davis considers that not only has the word nostalgia} been fully “demedicalized” and even undergoing a process of “depsychologization” but also it has been assimilated into American popular speech (or Western culture’s speech in general) since the 1950s. He proposes that connotations of abnormality and neurosis which after a long occupancy under the dominion of psychiatry adhered to the word are quickly dissolving through the word’s popular and commercial positive use.13

According to media and culture theoretician Dominik Schrey, the peculiar sense of nostalgia that has been developed by Western societies must be understood as an essential feature of our culture of preserving and storing.14_{If nostalgia is now longing for the past and} a “preoccupation” with preserving and storing, photography is particularly nostalgic: once one chooses to photograph something, one is already longing for that moment – enough to think it should be preserved and archived. This mania for archiving life can also be found in the obsession with photo albums and, currently, with social media. Photography responds to one’s fright of neglecting and forgetting significant and remarkable moments (such as weddings or graduations) that enable one to make sense of their life, past, and identity. However, because of digital photography and its fast access (particularly camera phones), it is as though every moment is now stellar and should be remembered. American literary and cultural critic Susan Sontag referred to the camera as “the instrument of ‘fast seeing’.” 15_I suggest that the phone camera has become, more than ever, the fundamental instrument for rapid seeing as it is being used to photograph almost every moment with minor care. It may be asserted that “photography’s present mood (…) may be too fast”, becoming why most

12_{Reynolds, Retromania, XXVl.} 13_{Davis, Yearning for Yesterday, 5.}

14_{Dominik Schrey, “Analogue Nostalgia and the Aesthetics of Digital Remediation,” in Media and Nostalgia,}

by Katarina Niemeyer, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 27.

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people might be nostalgic for a slower and more artisanal time.16_{During the analog era, life} moved at a slower pace as there were more waiting moments and limited information at a restricted time, yet, culture felt as though it was moving forward. In the digital age, daily life entails “hyper-acceleration and near-instantaneity” and people are particularly impatient from being accustomed to promptness.17_{Even with a relentless rush, there seems to be an overall} impression that culture feels static and at a dead end.18 _{Given this desire to return to a more} primitive state, there is a fascination for analog anything: from typewriters to an “enthusiasm for daguerreotypes, stereograph cards, photographic cartes de visite, family snapshots, [and] the work of forgotten nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century provincial and commercial photographers.”19_{It is as though these forms had a superior handmade quality to them while} digital is reminiscent of automation.

The nostalgia young digital age photographers feel for analog photography is mostly a nostalgia for a past they did not experience for long or at all. As Sontag puts it, one cannot own (a past) reality but, by way of photography, one can keep images and thus, though one cannot seize the present, one can retain the past – even that of someone else.20_Photographs and the images one consumes function as a way to second-hand live moments: observing a photo from the past, one often imagines and romanticizes what it would be like to return to that moment (either if that moment belonged to our chronology or not). It seems there is universal anxiety for living what one can no longer live. As labelled by Fred Davis, nostalgia can be distinguished between collective and private, being that the difference has more to do with the content of nostalgia on a symbolical and imaginary level than with the actual

16_{Sontag, On Photography, 97.} 17_{Reynolds, Retromania, 427.} 18_Ibid. 19_{Sontag, On Photography, 97.} 20_{Ibid, 128.}

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nostalgic experience.21_{Both collective and private nostalgia have to do with the longing and} adoration of a period of the past, whether personally experienced or not. However, for collective nostalgia, the symbolic objects of nostalgic experience are extremely public, well-known and shared by a culture (or even across cultures) and can induce a nostalgic feeling to millions of people simultaneously. For instance, the mere sight of a toy such as a Tamagotchi might induce a nostalgic wave which can be felt by any person who experienced their

childhood during the ‘90s up to the early 2000s.

Oppositely, the symbolic images and references of a private nostalgia will be sourced from an individual memoir. For instance, the swing at a park one used to visit as a child or the food our grandmother used to cook.22_{What one can witness, nevertheless, is that there has been a} monopolization of collective nostalgia over a private one and that this monopolization happens by and through the mass media. Davis claims that the most pronounced motive is

21_{Davis, Yearning for Yesterday, 122.} 22_{Ibid., 123.}

Figure 1. The popular Japanese toy from the ‘90s and early 2000s titled

Tamagotchi was launched in 1996 and was essentially a virtual pet its users had to take care of by feeding, bathing, and playing with until it would grow into an “adult”. Unknown Photographer. Photograph. Accessed July 13, 2019.

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that the media – from radio to tv and cinema – have a more notorious place in our mental lives now than could have been in the era of pre-mass communications.23_{Plenty of what we} think, feel and believe about our surroundings originates, is processed, and defined by the media; the media’s portrayal of an important event for humanity is the image that remains in the spectator’s memory. Even if someone has not lived during the Roaring Twenties, due to the media that they have consumed - such as movies they have seen, stories they have read and radio shows they have listened to - they may sense nostalgia for that effervescent period. This romanticized representation of an earlier historical reality that later attains a similar nostalgic status as what was experienced firsthand is an implanted memory.24

The notion of implanted memory is defined by memory studies researcher Alison Landsberg as a ‘prosthetic memory’. Prosthetic memories are memories that are not part of a person’s lived experience, but rather memories that are implanted in their imaginary.25

Landsberg claims that the mass media fundamentally modifies our conception of what is considered an experience, consequently becoming a “privileged arena” for fabricating and circulating prosthetic memories and implanting experiences. 26_{These prosthetic memories} can, later on, be felt nostalgically by the spectator alone and collectively. The media filters, re-arranges and reconstructs these memories: photographs that are part or replace our memory of events (such as the iconic photographs from the 9/11) are thus taken from ‘real-life’ collective experience but concurrently generate and implant a new collective memory, reminisced communally as though lived by all.

23_{Davis, Yearning for Yesterday, 127.} 24_{Ibid, 121.}

25_{Alison Landsberg, “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner,” Body & Society 1, no. 3–4 (1995):}

175–189, https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X95001003010, 176.

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1.2. The Commodification of Nostalgia: From Retromania to The Hipster.

The concept of prosthetic memory implanted by the media, along with its ability to cause collective nostalgia, points to retromania as well as its commodification and capitalization. Nostalgia is now comprehensively entangled with consumer entertainment.27_{There has been} a noticeable surge in marketing nostalgia either by directly selling products from a certain period (usually the immediate past) or by re-running or re-making old tv shows or films.28_In 1979, in a somewhat prophetical way, Fred Davis already wonders if media’s aptitude of exploiting past cultural aspects for present pleasure and profit would cause the selection and promotion of media products to be guided by their “future nostalgia exploitation potential.”29 The commercialization of “nostalgic products” and the obsession with attaching certain imagery and products to time, as a result of “a capitalist society [which] requires a culture based on images (…) in order to stimulate buying”cultivates a culture now calculating and indexing passage of time through trends, popular products and imagery.30

The commodification of nostalgia results from a shared retromania: an obsession with the past and the old. As Reynolds describes, the word ‘retro’ refers specifically to “a self-conscious fetish for period stylization (in music, clothes, design) expressed creatively through pastiche and citation” and although “retro in its strict sense tends to be the preserve of

aesthetes, connoisseurs and collectors”, it is now common to use the word in a more generalized way to define nearly anything that conveys the rather recent past of popular culture.31_{Earlier eras equally had their obsessions with antiquity - for instance, the}

Renaissance’s veneration of Roman and Greek classicism. Nonetheless, our society has been

27_{Reynolds, Retromania, XXIX.}

28_{We have seen the return of vinyl and cassettes to multiple stores, but there is also a market for vintage objects}

ranging from posters and magazines to re-fashioning old models of shoes.

29_{Davis, Yearning for Yesterday, 132.}

30_{Sontag, On Photography, 140. Reynolds, Retromania, XXX.} 31 _{Reynolds, Retromania, XXX. Ibid, Xlll.}

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one of the most infatuated with the cultural artifacts of its immediate past. “The fascination for fashions, fads, sounds and stars that occurred within living memory” is what separates retro from antiquarianism or history.32_{In photography, an antique photograph would be a} daguerreotype or ambrotype from the 19th_{Century, while a retro photograph would be for} instance a photograph of a Pin-Up or Marilyn Monroe. Retro generally comprises the artifacts of popular culture, while earlier revivals were based around high culture:

consequently, the retro often goes with flea market and charity shop rather than the auction house or antique dealer.33_{The attitude to retro is not scholarly nor intellectual as it is the case} with the antique - retro relates to playfulness and is revived by being recycled, recombined adapted to the present cultural trends, whereas the antique usually remains in its original state.34_{As researched by media researcher Aleit Veenstra and cultural sociologist Giselinde} Kuipers in “It Is Not Old-Fashioned, It Is Vintage”, vintage items symbolize authenticity and uniqueness. The aesthetic preference for the vintage and retro, along with the refusal of new and mass-produced design and culture, is typically paired with the subculture of the

“hipster”.35_{The “hipster” is mutually a group identifier and an archetypal slur. As an}

identifier, it refers to the communities of individuals within the creative and art world - often blamed for gentrification - formed inside poor urban enclaves (e.g. Brooklyn, Williamsburg in New York City to Capitol Hill in Seattle) in the late nineties and early thousands.36_These groups became defined by their collective aesthetic of appropriating and ironically presenting countercultural fashions and low culture symbols: they are outlined as part of the trend on

32_{Reynolds, Retromania, XIV.} 33_{Ibid., XXX.}

34_{Ibid, XXXI.}

35_{Aleit Veenstra and Giselinde Kuipers, “It Is Not Old-Fashioned, It Is Vintage, Vintage Fashion and The}

Complexities of 21st Century Consumption Practices,” Sociology Compass 7, no. 5 (2013): 355–65, https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12033, 357.

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uncovering obscure cultural products and can thus be seen as the main “victims” of retromania.37_{In the article “What Was The Hipster?” cultural critic Mark Greif outlines a} brief history of the hipster. According to Greif, when thinking of the contemporary hipster it means the subcultural figure who surfaced by 1999 and remained in a first phase until 2003, following that in 2004 it suffered a “reorganization” which then spread until today. The atmosphere from which the hipster developed was nineties youth culture’s alternative and indie individuals who rejected consumerism. However, paradoxically, these individuals offered a setting for new commerce and commodification of that spirit. Over the years, the hipster style advanced and can be found in those who align simultaneously with rebel

subculture and with the dominant class, which as Greif claims “opens up a poisonous conduit between the two.”38_{As an archetypal slur, the term is frequently applied not only to the} previous subculture but also to individuals in other more secluded places. The term has become quite pejorative as it often connotes to egotism and shallowness: when using it in its negative conception, the term associates with an individual that though shares the appearance and liberal ideas of a “genuine” nonconformist, their drive is rather to generate an image of revolt which is mostly fashion rather than natural radicalism. Reynold explains that this identity has been highly critiqued and is rarely incorporated voluntarily - despite fitting the stereotype, one will most likely not describe themselves as a hipster.39_{Due to the popularity} of “hipster culture”, the hipster has accordingly become one of the main targets of

commodified nostalgia and retromania.40_{Along with their turntables and record players, the} hipster will most likely also be adept of film photography or own a polaroid camera.

37_{Henke, “Postmodern Authenticity and the Hipster Identity”, 117.}

38_{It is important to note that vintage fashion is commonly– as antique collecting - a taste that is cultivated and}

valued more by the middle-class, whereas the lower classes set more value on things which are brand new. Mark Greif, “What Was the Hipster?,” New York Magazine, 2010, http://nymag.com/news/features/69129/.

39_{Reynolds, Retromania, XXll} 40_{Ibid., 194.}

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The obsession for the analog can, not only be commercialized within the use of the medium itself but also through apps and in fashion. In an article by modern media company “Vox Media”, one reads the title “Kodak wants to resurrect itself. So it’s looking to analog-obsessed teens.”41

41_{Kaitlyn Tiffany, “Kodak Wants to Resurrect Itself. So It’s Looking to Analog-Obsessed Teens”. Vox,}

September 13, 2018, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/13/17855932/kodak-forever-21-film-clothing-line-collaboration-analog-culture.

Figure 2. The cover of Vox Media’s Article about Kodak’s streetwear collection. 2018. Screenshot from Vox Media’s website. Accessed July 13, 2019.

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/13/17855932/kodak-forever-21-film-clothing-line-collaboration-analog-culture.

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Figure 3. Jorden Keith, Forever 21 x Kodak Campaign. Photograph. Accessed July 13, 2019.

https://www.forever21.com/eu/shop/catalog/category/f21/promo-kodak?lang=en

Figure 4. Jared Thomas Kocka, Forever 21 x Kodak Campaign. Photograph.

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The article informs about the collaborative streetwear line between film brand Kodak and American fast-fashion retailer Forever 21. The collection includes pieces ranging from T-shirts to loungewear designed with the logo and color schemes of the brand. As seen in figure 3 to 4, not only is the design of the pieces emulating Kodak nostalgia, but also the campaign photos are making use of nostalgic aesthetic. In figure 3 this is done by adding sprocket holes to the image, a detail that can be found at the top and bottom of 35mm film and is usually not exposed (thus not appearing on prints) however that, with certain cameras, can be made visible.42_{Sprocket holes’ display is particularly popular in the photographic} movement ‘Lomography’ in which lowcost cameras are used to via archetypal aesthetics -openly demonstrate that the photograph is analog.43_{In figure 4 the analog and nostalgic look} is established by proposing a candid snapshot.44_{Kodak’s strategies of marketing were based} on teaching consumers to look at their experiences as though they were objects of nostalgia and that taking snapshots of those moments would conserve them.45_{Consequently, the} snapshot has often been correlated with nostalgia as it evokes spontaneous, unposed candid moments. As art historian Geoffrey Batchen mentions in “Vernacular Photographies”, vernacular photographs are ordinary photographs that “preoccupy the home and the heart but rarely the museum or the academy”, these objects usually are seen to have “minimal

42_{Sprocket hole’s function is to grip on the sprocket teeth of the camera and thus allow the film to be}

transported through the camera.

43_{“Glossary” Lomography Film, accessed July 13, 2019, https://microsites.lomography.com/film/glossary/.}

These analog aesthetics will be defined later on the chapter.

44_{The snapshot is a term coined by John Herschel in 1860 describing the practice of quick and easy}

photography through the use of simple equipment. Gelder, Hilde Van, and Helen Westgeest. Photography

Theory in Historical Perspective. 1st ed. Chichester, West Sussex ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, 232.

45_{Nancy Martha West, Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia (Cultural Frames, Framing Culture), 1st ed., Cultural}

Frames, Framing Culture (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000),

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intellectual content beyond sentimental cliché.”46_{Figure 4 tries to recreate this cliché as the} photograph creates the impression of being a nostalgic memento belonging to someone’s ordinary life: as far as one knows, these are just two friends playfully having pizza. Although posed and clearly from a fashion shoot, photograph in figure 3 still attempts to recreate analog and nostalgic aesthetics through the addition of the sprocket holes.

1.3. Retromediation And The Aesthetics Of Nostalgia.

According to new media researchers Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin, media are incessantly commenting and referring to one another by re-producing, replacing and assuming the techniques and social significance of each other. Since it always relates to and with other media, a medium cannot operate by itself.47_{Bolter and Grusin define three traits of the} genealogy of new media: immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation. Immediacy (or transparent immediacy) is defined as “a style of visual representation whose goal is to make the viewer forget the presence of the medium (e.g. the canvas) and believe that they are in the presence of the objects of representation”, whereas hypermediacy is defined as “a style of visual representation whose goal is to remind the viewer of the medium”: the purpose is for the user to recognize (and desire) the medium as a medium. 48_{Lastly, remediation, which} derives from the Latin remedeui, meaning “to heal, to restore to health”, was adopted by Bolter and Grusin to prompt how in our culture one medium is seen as reforming or refining of another.49_{Thus, remediation’s goal is to refashion other media: for instance, the World} Wide Web is a remediation of the print and the photograph of the painting. Each remediation and resulting new media fill a lack or repair a fault of the former medium: the photograph

46_{Geoffrey Batchen, “Vernacular Photographies” History of Photography 24, no. 3 (2000),262.}

https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/doi/abs/10.1080/03087298.2000.10443418.

47_{J. David Bolter and Richard A. Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass: MIT}

Press, 1999), 55.

48_{Bolter and Grusin, Remediation, 272. Ibid.} 49_{Ibid, 59.}

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remediated the painting because it was seemingly better at accurately representing reality.50 Bolter and Grusin argue that the lack and inadequacy that the new medium attempts to reform is frequently a deficiency of immediacy and transparency.51_{They claim that if a new device} for visual representation was to be invented, this new device would be positioned over against the already existing media and that, unavoidably, the claim would be that this new device is better in some way at attaining the real or the authentic. Hence, overall, Bolter and Grusin claim that media’s main goal is to achieve immediacy and to forget the presence of the medium.

Referring to photography, Bolter and Grusin question whether an image which is captured with a digital camera – and, as such, remains only as bits and suffers no chemical process – shall be considered a photograph or a computer graphic.52_{They advance their} inquiry by wondering if even an image that began as a “conventional photograph” but was, later on, scanned into the computer and re-touched, would still qualify as a photograph or would convert into computer graphics. Often, digital photography is seen as hypermediated, whereas analog photography is seen as transparent: digital photography seems to confound the desire for immediacy that usually analog photography (and the initial concept of

photography in general) is seen to satisfy. Due to the ease of altering an image digitally, it has been regarded that digital photography is less “truthful” and indexical than analog. This argument comes from the physical relation the photograph has with the object which is photographed. The images on negatives result from “the transformation of light sensitive emulsion caused by light reflecting off the object photographed filtered through the lens and

50_{Bolter and Grusin, Remediation, 60.}

51_{The example mentioned previously regards thus to how photography was seen as more immediate than}

painting.

52_{Usually the photographer who captures images digitally and re-edits them digitally still wants the audience to}

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diaphragm”, while in a digital image the image is shaped via data, codes, and numbers.53 Nonetheless, film scholars such as Tom Gunning, have argued that storing via numerical data does not eradicate indexicality. Gunning claims that it would be irrational to strictly identify indexicality with photography, since most documented indexical evidence is converted into numbers, as for instance measurement instruments as a barometer or a speedometer.54 According to Gunning, an index does not need to look like the thing it represents. Even though digital manipulation is easier, film-based photography can still transform the appearance of what it captures via light by retouching, exposure time, use of filters or its angle.55_{One’s evaluation of photographic accuracy is not merely contingent to its indexical} basis, but on distinguishing it as appearing as its subject. Perception is thus also involved. 56 Bolter and Grusin likewise argued that the dichotomy between the two media is purely a cultural decision and that digital photography can be as transparent as an analog one.57_It could be said digital photography remediated analog photography successfully because it eliminated most of analog’s “flaws” at representing reality as it is – at least aesthetically.58

Nonetheless, the cultural decision and belief that photography captured by light is more indexical than an image translated into numbers can still be identified as one of the reasons for the fetish for the analog. Furthermore, this fetish can be seen as a nostalgic desire for immediacy that was (chemically) better achieved and, presumably, more truthful because of the lack of digital alteration: it retained what philosopher Walter Benjamin termed the “aura”. According to Benjamin, the aura was only possible on the original work of art, since

53_{Tom Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index? Or, Faking Photographs” Digital Aesthetics, Nordic Research}

on Media and Communication Review, no. 1–2 (2004): 39–49, 40.

54_{Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index?”, 40.} 55_{Ibid., 41.}

56_Ibid.

57_{Bolter and Grusin, Remediation,110.}

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it refers to a one-time experience – existing at a specific time and space - that cannot be reproduced. In the age of mechanical reproduction, society feels the urge to closely grasp an object through its reproduction, except that reproduction differs from the original precisely because its presence at a specific time and space, its uniqueness and aura are lost. 59_Hence, culturally, the fetish is not only of indexicality but also of material uniqueness. The analog process is seen as the original form of photography and as ‘vintage’ in the current digital panorama.

It has become common to make the digital appear analog through a remediation to the old, a process that is termed retromediation. Since media and new technologies can function as tools to express and create nostalgia, nostalgia becomes not only something we feel and a cultural product we consume, but also something we actively do with and through media.60 When photo apps and filters try to recreate analog aesthetics, it can be seen as a process of retromediation and actively doing nostalgia. But, if both analog photography and digital photography are, ultimately, photography, then how do you make photography look like photography? What can be said to be the aesthetics of analog? Following Reynolds’ approach of what it signifies to apply the analog and nostalgic aesthetics to music, one takes back that the main technique to create an “old-timey and elegiac atmosphere [is] through the use of sound treatments suggestive of decay and wear-and-tear.”61_{He claims that the qualities of} production used in an older era, such as black and white, are as relevant as the subtle properties of the recording media themselves, including the rate of decay of that precise

59_{Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in The Work of Art in the Age of}

Mechanical Reproduction, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 4.

60_{Katarina Niemeyer, ed., Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, Present and Future, 1st ed., Palgrave}

Macmillan Memory Studies (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014), https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137375872, 7

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medium.62_{That decay, for instance, the faded and discolored look of an old photograph,} becomes a representation of memory, its fragility, and the passing of time – all which are associated with nostalgia.63_{Schrey equally refers to the imprint of passage of time as} belonging to the aesthetics of analog: when an image’s degradation stops being visible through the move to digital, then the imprint of time (and the aura) is lost.64_{Several ways of} editing, filters, and apps try to embody the imprint of time and analog flaws in the digital. Historian Gil Bartholeyns exemplifies how the company Lomographische AG (part of the movement of Lomography) marketed cheap cameras which would produce an unpredictable photo with light streaks, burned corners, grain, scratches, over-exposure and vignette. As digital technology achieved optical perfection, it began to simulate the imperfection that came with these unexpected analog photographs.65_{In a society that is so obsessed with} perfection, it seems paradoxical that imperfection became the way to perfect a photograph. A clear imprint of time seems to make media and artifacts more valuable, yet this same decay and oldness is not desirable for oneself. Perhaps each wrinkle should be seen as an added value, as much as the fetish for the analog sees each light streak, grain and other forms of decay as the way to perfect a photograph that is too perfect.

The retromediation of digital photography can be seen as a form of hypermediacy since the main goal is to make it obvious that the medium of (analog) photography was used, rather than to achieve immediacy by forgetting that one is looking at a photograph. Figures 5 and 6 represent a digitized version of two 135 film photographs without any digital alteration. Figure 5 was taken in a black and white film which in itself already invokes “oldness”,

62_{Reynolds, Retromania, 331.} 63_{Ibid, 329.}

64_{Schrey, “Analogue Nostalgia and the Aesthetics of Digital Remediation”, 35.}

65_{Gil Bartholeyns, “The Instant Past: Nostalgia and Digital Retro Photography” in Media and Nostalgia:}

Yearning for the Past, Present and Future, ed. Katharina Niemeyer, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies

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nostalgia and the analog. Additionally, there is visible grain and blurriness which also suggests analog photography. The image in itself also presents nostalgic characteristics that come from the blending of the human figure with the landscape: it suggests decay, passage of time and its slow disappearance.

Figure 5. Rita Bolieiro. Untitled. 2016. Photograph.

Figure 6 was taken with a disposable camera with a colored film and showcases most of the characteristics that Lomography announces as the typical analog look.66_These

characteristics are film grain (a grainy texture which happens due to the existence of tiny particles of a metallic silver or the dye clouds which originate the color image), lens flare (an effect created when light enters the lens hitting the camera’s film or digital sensor resulting in

66_{INEFFABLE_ICE, “Creating Light Leaks the Analogue Way” Lomography, 2013,}

https://www.lomography.com/magazine/260270-creating-light-leaks-the-analogue-way.

Figure 6. Rita Bolieiro. Untitled. 2014. Photograph.

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shimmering rings and circles), vignette (the darkening of the edges of an image that can be caused by a shadow created by the lens); light leaks (the glared effect, usually in warm colors, that is instigated by a gap or hole in the camera causing the light to leak), and burnt edges. Film grain, dustiness and lens flare are visible next to the plane’s wing, vignette on the top right, and light leak/burning on the bottom of the photograph - aesthetically, figure 6 is a well-defined analog photograph.

What several contemporary photo apps try to do is to essentially imitate and insert the previous features on digital photographs. A popular photo editing phone app that mimics analog aesthetic is “Huji Cam”.67_{The app’s logo “Just Like The Year 1998”, promises to} make your photos go back in time and contain the aesthetics of the ‘90s.

Figure 7. Preview of Huji Cam App in App Store. Screenshot from App Store. Accessed July 13, 2019. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/huji-cam/id781383622

67_{‘Huji’ is an obvious reference to photography company Fujifilm which was the first Japanese producer of}

photographic film and Kodak’s main rival. Fujifilm is currently also one of the bestsellers of film and known for its instant photography cameras “Instax” and “Instax Mini”, cameras which function the same way as the Polaroid.

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When opening the app, one sees an image that resembles an actual Fujifilm disposable camera. In figure 10 one can read:

Figure 8 & 9. Photograph of the Fujifilm Fujicolor QuickSnap Flash 400 35mm Disposable Camera. Accessed July 13, 2019.

https://www.urbanoutfitters.com/shop/fujifilm-fujicolor-quicksnap-flash-400-35mm-disposable-camera

Figure 10. Huji Cam App’s process of editing photographs. 2019. Screenshots from Huji Cam App.

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“Disposable film camera. Thank you for purchasing HUJI Cam. Developing will start as soon as you take a picture, and the developing process will only occur while the app is running. Press the shutter when you are ready to face 1998 (…)”

According to the app, once we take a photograph, the developing occurs immediately: one is given the fastness of the current age but the romanticized process and aesthetic of 1998. First, the “shutter button” at the bottom right must be pressed, which will take the user to see their subject without the effect. After pressing the shutter button, an image of a film roll is displayed and one can see the results of their photographs (which will look similar to photograph in figure 11) when accessing the image gallery named “Lab”.68

Figure 11. A Photograph edited by Huji Cam App. Rita Bolieiro. Untitled. 2019. Photograph. The user can even opt between using flash, timer, “selfie mode” and activating or not

“random light effects” and the date stamp on the bottom of the image which can be altered

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from 1998 to the current date. 69_{As visible in figure 11, the result is a saturated image with a} slight glitched effect and a trace of a light leak.70_{This app can be seen as an example of} hypermedia, as the act of representation is visible.71_{The app tries to emulate the experience} of photographing analog on a digital on-the-go format by imitating its visual appearance and process.72_{One is aware of the medium of the digital phone exactly because of the use of the} disposable camera’s appearance, which can remind us of our desire for immediacy and using the analog camera itself.73_{Bolter and Grusin stated that “sometimes hypermediacy has} adopted a playful or subversive attitude, both acknowledging and undercutting the desire for immediacy”, which is what is done by this app.74_{This method is successful because, as} Bartholeyns claimed, “the last analog generation may drive the market and cultivate the myth, but it is evident that most users are, in fact, digital natives.”75 _{The most interesting part} is that it has become almost an art itself to master the effect of the analog in digital

photographs. Like in most things, if it is used “too much” the analog aesthetic becomes clearly edited, hence kitsch. Most apps exaggerate the old look and therefore one must learn to edit manually through image altering programs like Photoshop.

1.4. Self-Induced Nostalgia: Its Weight on Identity and Aestheticizing One’s Life.

Nostalgia manages to induce a sensation simultaneously painful and enjoyable: when

remembering a lost time, one might feel desolation from the impossibility of re-experiencing

69_{The date stamp is yet another visual characteristic of analog and outdated photography.}

70_{The glitch effect is quite contradictory, as the glitch effect is usually a result of an error occurring within the}

code and data of the digital file that causes a distortion in the image.

71_{The app’s extreme interactivity also links it with hypermedia as, often, interactive applications are associated}

with hypermedia.

72_{The image one is looking at in reality is even shown, before being photographed, on the small viewer at the}

top which is imitating the actual viewer of the analog camera.

73_{I am not aware if the app wished to make the digital medium obvious (as it happens) or if it attempted}

immediacy and transparency by emulating the process of the disposable camera.

74_{Bolter and Grusin, Remediation, 34.} 75_{Bartholeyns, “The Instant Past”, 54.}

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it, yet, the act of reminiscing might be pleasant. Davis claims that nostalgia is one of the ways one has of relating one’s past to one’s present and future, as it is “one of the more readily accessible psychological lenses (…) [through which one] employ[s] a never-ending work of constructing, maintaining, and reconstructing [one’s] (…) identities” 76_{. In a research done} for the American Psychological Association titled “Nostalgia Fosters Self-Continuity”, it was also found that nostalgia might benefit one’s self-esteem and psychological adjustment as not only is nostalgia responsible for maintaining a feeling of self-continuity but also it might foster a sense of belongingness and acceptance.77_{Fittingly, nostalgia is both highly employed} in the media and also often self-induced. Gil Bartholeyns coins as “self-induced nostalgia” deliberately generating nostalgia through a specific action.78_{He uses as an example that a} “mother experiences nostalgia not at seeing her son go off to school but at seeing the photo of her son going off to school.”79 _{Hence, photography is a form of self-induced nostalgia which} is quite contradictory since one wants to isolate and make the present tangible by making it pass more quickly. 80_{Other ways one might self-induce nostalgia includes “writing poems or} taking meditative walks” since these can nurture thoughts about the past.81_{Bartholeyns sees} self-induced nostalgia as a technique to bring aesthetic value to one’s life. In other words,

76_{Davis, Yearning for Yesterday, 31}

77_{When collectively reminiscing about a cultural object of a specific time (for instance the Tamagotchi), one}

might feel connected to the other people they visit those memories with, which will ultimately cause a pleasing feeling of relatedness and integration. It has become quite popular to make articles and memes based on “throwbacks” for instance directed at “only 90’s kids”: this causes a sense of belonging between each person from that group and pleasure from collectively remembering the “good old times” only they know. Moreover, some of the most cheerful conversations one has with their friends and family are often recollections of memories. Constantine Sedikides et al., “Nostalgia Fosters Self-Continuity: Uncovering the Mechanism (Social Connectedness) and Consequence (Eudaimonic Well-Being).,” Emotion 16, no. 4 (2016): 524–39,

https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000136.

78_{Bartholeyns, “The Instant Past”, 55.} 79_{Bartholeyns, “The Instant Past”, 60.}

80_{Ibid, 67. Sontag likewise contended that when one photographs, one is participating in a thing’s or person’s}

mortality and that is how photograph becomes memento mori – by testifying to “time’s relentless melt”. Sontag,

On Photography, 11.

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nostalgia is not only used as a way to set our identities according to a timeline of ourselves but also - particularly by retromediation - as an attempt to bring a certain aesthetic worth to one’s life. In this case, retro aesthetics function as an attempt at creating a personality based on alleged uniqueness and authenticity.

The positive result of nostalgia is somewhat paradoxical, as nostalgia is also easily correlated to melancholia and self-identity crises resulting from anachronism. Anachronism is defined by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language as “(…) [being] out of its proper or chronological order, especially a person or practice that belongs to an earlier time.”82_{In a film, a case of anachronism would be to include a contemporary object, such as} a phone, in a movie set during the medieval age. Like Don Quixote who - after reading too many books on chivalric romances - wishes to impose archaic moral codes and values he reads about in a society that has already abandoned them, it could be said that contemporary society, namely “hipsters”, are also anachronists who wish to remain using analog techniques in a digital world. As an anachronist, one sculpts their lives through nostalgia and perhaps, through retromediation, one considers it enough to look as though one is in a past simpler time. Furthermore, by using a dated aesthetic, a temporal distance is created, consequently adding extra emotional value to a photograph. The impression of retromediation being enough ultimately relates to the thought argued by sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard that, currently, the representation of the thing is more important than the thing itself, together with the idea of living in a society of the spectacle studied by philosopher Guy Debord. According to Baudrillard, the representation becomes more important than the

82_{“Anachronism” in American Heritage Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin}

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referent, since the representation of real ends up becoming the real itself: “the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referential.”83_{The real does not have a} chance to produce itself again, and when the real stops being what it was, then “nostalgia assumes its full meaning.”84_{Thus, it can be said that to re-evoke nostalgia in the media, and} make use of the aesthetics of the analog, is an attempt at representing the referent that can no longer exist. The time we try to re-live and re-create can longer return, therefore the image commences representing the real itself. Moreover, when trying to digitally simulate our photographs to look old and analog through apps or filters, one is additionally making the representation of the real (of the analog) more important than the referent (analog). One might think: why using the real if I can just represent and re-create it? Guy Debord states that “life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles” and that roughly all has become a representation.85_{No longer are we concerned with the aura of a person or the “true}

meaning” of things/people, but rather how they present themselves. Thus, reality is

something to be looked at (or captured) rather than experienced: the real world becomes mere images and the images become real beings. People become, simultaneously, mere spectators and spectacle. Debord argues that this excess of contemplating outwardly prevents the individual from living, turning the individual’s gestures into not their own but of someone who represents them to him. This can directly be applied to the idea that the media constantly (re)present to us what we often end up becoming and, as discussed, a past that we ultimately acquire but was never our own. Nevertheless, an anachronist, an artist or a hipster who feel threatened with this concept – who look for authenticity in their lives, and in how they represent themselves - will most likely make use of the actual analog.

83_{Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 3.} 84_Ibid.

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Conclusion

This chapter has shown that nostalgia can either be private or collective, factual or fabricated and that its implantation is done mostly by the media on a collective level. The media have managed to re-appropriate nostalgia for profit, while at the same time implementing in consumer’s imagination new memories and nostalgia. The current high presence of hipster culture and retromania have been the ideal context for the commodification of nostalgia. As a result, analog photography made its return centered on its outdatedness and the fact that it is a main producer of nostalgia. Not only has the medium returned but also its aesthetics have been isolated and applied to the digital media by retromediation – a form of remediating a digital medium into looking old. It has been noted that retromediation in photography occurs mostly through phone apps that apply “analog filters” to digital photos containing features such as a grain, light leaks and an appearance of decay that, with the perfectionism of the digital, has disappeared. The concept of self-induced nostalgia has been seen to be mostly linked to the indication that it can aestheticize one’s life, since the retro and vintage have connotations with authenticity. At the same time, self-induced nostalgia has proved to be important to connect our past to our present or even, through collective nostalgia, connect with others. Retromediated photography or analog photography become a more relevant way to use nostalgia to aestheticize one’s life and form an identity because, as explored, in today’s image-based society, the representation has become more important than the real. In the next chapter, it will be explored how instant photography also becomes a tool for self-knowledge and identity development by actually resisting the image-based world and focusing on its materiality.

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The lure of instant photography: from “gimmick” to empowering tool

A massive amount of camera phones and digital snapshot cameras take photographs

instantaneously and effortlessly every day, yet the popularity of analog instant photography is increasing. This chapter proposes to unveil how potentials such as instant photography’s materiality can source its revival and how digital age photographers have approached it.

First, the chapter will examine the polaroid’s background as a gimmick that was mostly demeaned by photographers. To understand the impact of its materiality, instant photography will then be examined as a photo-object directly related to remembrance, using cultural theorist Peter Buse’s “The Polaroid Image as Photo-Object” and art historian

Geoffrey Batchen’s Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance as an auxiliary bibliography. The concept of materiality and its relevance will be studied within the

framework of the materiality turn in anthropology. To acknowledge instant photography as a tangible item, the notion of metapicture and self-referentiality in photography will be

discussed along with the analysis of two Instax photographs. After analyzing the relationship between instant photography and its materiality, its suggestion of play will be considered by seeing how instant photography is both used to chronicle parties and eventually becomes the party; a link will be established between photography and the concept of ‘Cinema of

Attractions’. To examine this hypothesis, event photography company ESP Camera and their use of Polaroid for photographing events will be assessed. Further, Myles Loftin’s polaroids will be used to study and illustrate instant photography’s ability to evoke authenticity. As it stimulates genuineness, instant photography can be seen as an empowering tool. To study digital age photographer’s approach to this potential and impetus, Rita Lino’s polaroids will be analyzed. Furthermore, considering how their irreproducibility can incite erotic

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photography, the naked body in instant photography will be examined within the context of the ideas of art critic John Berger regarding the difference between the nude and the naked.

2.1 A Brief History Of Instant Photography: The Polaroid As A Toy

Instant photography was pioneered by Edwin Land’s Polaroid Corporation, instigating the frequent misconception of calling all instant photographs a “Polaroid”.86_{The first instant} camera had a peel-apart film that created a sepia-toned image and was released in 1948. The process involved pressing the shutter, removing the negative from the back of the camera, waiting for about a minute, tearing a protective paper off the photograph and only then could one see their image. In 1972 there was already both monochrome and colored film, and with “integral” film sheets, true one-step photography was achieved; the user’s only task was pressing the shutter for the magic to happen. Eventually, amid the growth of digital

photography, instant film’s revenues declined and in 2008 the production of polaroid cameras and film stopped. Nonetheless, in 2010 the brand releases the Spectra Cameras and returns producing and selling colored film.

Due to its ease of use, the Polaroid camera was first seen as a product for the masses rather than a professional photography audience. American photographer Ansel Adams, a consultant for Polaroid from 1949 until his death in 1984, alerted the company that it was not being taken seriously by the professional photography community, namely because its advertising highlighted informal and amateurish use of the camera. 87_{Thus, most people} considered the Polaroid a “semi-toy”and most professional and creative photographers disdained the process, considering it a “gimmick”.88_{Polaroid’s main targets were women,}

86_{There are multiple brands involved with instant photography: most popularly Fujifilm, Lomography, and, of}

course, Polaroid. Currently, the Fujifilm Instax is one of the most common used instant cameras. Even though it belongs to the brand Fujifilm and therefore the photos it produces are named “Instax”, people often still call their Instax photos “Polaroids”.

87_{Peter Buse, “SURELY FADES AWAY,” Photographies 1, no. 2 (2008), 7-8.} 88_Ibid.