Cheap Shots
Seventeen photographers from Ann Arbor’s Krappy Camera Club are staging a show of really interesting work created with cheap cameras.
Their Lo-fi manifesto is as refreshing as their work:
At this moment in history, the technical aspects of photography are receiving unprecedented attention. New cameras of amazing sophistication are breathlessly analyzed by photo magazines and websites. Photographers are draining their bank accounts attempting to keep up with equipment purchases.
But a few photographers are reacting against this conspicuous consumption and rampant technophillia.
The essence of photography - to place a particular frame around the world at a particular moment - remains unchanged. So some choose to pursue this act in the rawest possible way: By using the most obsolete, flawed, and lo-tech cameras available. Most were created as economy snapshot cameras, some even as toys. Many are decades old. All share very limited controls, and optics of questionable quality.
The toy camera aesthetic turns its back on sterile technical perfection. Instead it celebrates the messy unpredictability and dreamlike imagery that only a truly rotten camera can provide.
The analog between these art photographers and winemakers is intriguing. By turning their attention back to earlier means of making pictures, these artists seem to be making room for the pictures to answer some interesting questions: Is the technology an enabler or an obstacle to expression? Can the world express itself more artistically when we move the technology to the margins? Do the flaws have voices? Do the limitations make the world more interesting?
