I am a film camera junkie. After years of being overwhelmed and unimpressed by the digital age of photography — I had digital cameras, but they were all cheap and took bad pictures — I finally turned to the technology of the past to find a creative outlet. Then, a couple of years ago, I unearthed a manual Pentax film camera from my basement and, unsure of what to do, I threw myself at the mercy of knowledgeable friends, family, and Google.
After learning all the little tricks and rules of film photography, I realized that my hobby had become an obsession, and I now have a collection of film cameras: a Holga, a “toy camera” made of plastic; a few point-and-shoots, like the kind at the back of every dad’s closet; and a beautiful antique Rolleicord with an awesome light leak. I love taking pictures that come out grainy, blurry, or imperfect, and taking a chance on a picture not turning out at all.
Top: photo taken with the Hipstamatic app for iPhone. Bottom: same building with a Holga, a toy film camera.
I am not alone. “Lo-fi” photography has plenty of enthusiasts, from Flickr groups for each type of camera and film, to the Lomography store recently opened on Queen Street West that sells toy cameras and their accessories. There are, with increasing frequency, pictures with a film aesthetic posted on the web, and each time I see them my heart leaps. Our generation’s obsession with film photography was even featured in Now Magazine last January, in an article entitled “Down on digital,” and summed up in an article by Frank Yang in Aggregation Magazine. Yang states that “Just as younger generations are buying their music on vinyl, it’s not only nostalgic aging photographers who refuse to give up their emulsions. It’s anyone who can appreciate the distinctive and still undigitizable character of the medium.”
At first, I thought I had found a community of kindred spirits online — but so many pictures were surfacing that I began to be suspicious. What I was seeing on Facebook and other sites was another progression in this lo-fi trend. The “undigitizable character” of film photography is now being digitized on the iPhone; an app called “Hipstamatic” simulates the aesthetic of film photography for a wider audience, through a mobile phone that is owned by over one hundred million people worldwide. While Hipstamatic is not the only lo-fi film app for mobile phones, it is the most popular. Over 1.4 million iPhone users have paid $1.99 for the app, either to try it out, or touse the digitized film as creative expression.
“We create software on mobile and social platforms that redefine the line between analog and digital photography,” explains Mario Estrada, the community director of Hipstamatic, in an article on pocket-lint.com.
But what differentiates this app most from its more tactile predecessor is the ability to see pictures immediately after taking them, and the option to share them online. It’s also much easier to carry, increasing your ability to capture an impromptu moment that can make a beautiful memory. “Nice cameras tend to be kind of heavy to carry [around] at all times,” says Toronto-based photographer Rachel Cartwright. “The iPhone, on the other hand, is always on me. It’s convenient.”
I am a steadfast believer that any kind of camera can take beautiful pictures. Though an SLR that costs thousands of dollars will deliver a different kind of picture than a disposable camera, who is to say which picture is better? What does “better” even mean? Cartwright describes the app as the ultimate equalizer. “It’s like every Hipstamatic shooter is on an even playing field, unlike the [more professional] world of photography. And I guess I’d say that’s the biggest difference between Hipstamatic and other photography. […] It is kind of nice to be working with certain constraints: […] the level playing field in the way of tools of the trade, not only camera equipment and knowledge, but also post-production skills and software.”
Chase Jarvis, a professional photographer who has taken on iPhone photography in order to develop a new look, has “ranted for years” on his blog about how “mobile phone photography changed [his] outlook on a bunch of things: creativity born from constraints, the immediacy of the moment, digital sharing, [and] the democratization of creativity.” He argues that the iPhone is the best and smallest camera that you can carry around with you anywhere.
Steph Highfield, a Hipstamatic user, also spoke of the iPhone as an important tool, and helped shed light on the benefits of taking vintage-looking pictures with an iPhone. “I have an iPhone 3G, which takes terrible pictures most of the time. An app like Hipstamatic takes advantage of [my iPhone’s] innate graininess and tendency toward weird lighting issues. It looks like you did it on purpose!”
“The reality is that we take a bad camera and make it worse in the most beautiful way,” says Estrada, on pocket-lint.com.
Learning all of this endeared me to the Hipstamatic, an app that has a bad reputation for being a cheap imitation of a serious medium. However, my readings and interviews highlighted what the analog and digital ends of lo-fi photography have in common.
“Photography, and art [in general], does not depend solely on your equipment,” says Highfield. “Art is composition, colour, and framing, yes. But it is also a mood and a feeling, and capturing a moment that will linger.”
Estrada echoes this sentiment. “I guess you could say we are rooted in the belief that art should be accessible, and that most people are creative until they’re told otherwise. We set out to bring the power of creativity back to people by changing the way people see and experience the world, capture memories, and share them with friends, family, and the world.”
It is exactly this idea of accessibility — what Highfield calls the “democratization of lo-fi film” — that attracted me to photography in the first place. “If using an iPhone app allows me to express what I want to express in an easier way, why put up walls? Down the road, you’ll be happy you created something; that you didn’t shy away because you didn’t feel like what you were doing was authentic enough to be art.”
