Photographs and gifs share one significant thing in common, they are constantly being questioned as to whether or not they can be called art. Most of the time when you think of art, you think of drawings and paintings, photography and most certainly gifs do not come to mind. Moreover, galleries usually don’t have a dedicated space for photography or digital media. For my gif project, I decided to revolve it around the film camera. I wanted to illustrate how hard it used to be to capture an image, in comparison with today’s technology. More importantly, I wanted to subtly hint at the deterioration of photography as an art form, through an individual’s lack of awareness and attention to detail caused by the camera in their phone.
In the narrative gif, I am using a Minolta XG-M with a 45mm lense. As I move the lense, the background of the gif becomes clearer. I wanted to emphasize the patience and time it takes for an object to come to focus when using a film camera, in comparison to today where all our cameras have autofocus. In the second gif, I created a graphic representation of the Rolleiflex film camera, as this gif progresses the flash gets brighter. With film cameras there were multiple different types of flashes that you could purchase. Furthermore, it took a lot of precision and skill to find the exact moment to use the flash. In comparison to today, where we can automatically turn the flash on or off, but we lack the control of it in terms of intensity.
Cameras have come a long way and are more accessible than ever before. Everyone who has a phone has one. The underlying message I was trying to convey is that when people use their phones to capture a moment, they’re not really thinking about the object that is being photographed. Their phones have great algorithms that will do the thinking for them and make the correct adjustments. Thus, you lose the art aspect of photography. Photography is an art form and it’s not only about the image you capture, but it’s also about how you capture it. When I take a picture of a flower on my phone, I don’t think about the flower. I think about the filters I would add to it and if it would suit my Instagram aesthetic. My camera automatically focuses on it and the flash is more so to make the picture brighter than anything else. However, when I use my film camera, I pay attention to the lighting that hits the flower, the shadows, the way it moves and small details that I would have never observed when using my phone. I have to be patient and get the camera to focus and decide how to best incorporate the flash to complement the object. This is what taking pictures on our phones lack for the general user.
Sources:
Johnson, Paddy. "Will Galleries and Museums Embrace GIF Art?" Artnet News. Artnet News,
24 Mar. 2015. Web. 24 May 2017. <https://news.artnet.com/art-world/will-galleries-and-
museums-ever-embrace-animated-gif-art-9650.
Flower Wall. Digital image. The Flower Wall Company. N.p., n.d. Web.
<http://blog.theflowerwallcompany.com/tag/wedding-planner/page/2/>.
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