Yes, analog photography is back in force! Articles and documents bear witness to this….
But frankly, who could have imagined it just a while ago, when since the beginning of the 21st century many people have been shooting images in their digital viewfinders and other phones without really knowing why?
And, looking at the recorded digital images followed by these long numbers….stored here or there without a caption, how then?… These images that we often have difficulty finding, what should we think?
For some time now, curious young generations have wanted to know what it means to photograph, what does this magical verb mean? It is “suddenly” (a fashionable word), a whole philosophy which takes shape, develops and comes back to the surface, that of photographic papers.
To be young or not so young? Ultimately it doesn’t matter. It’s here, to take your time to look, feel, choose, frame, lay out, then in the end decide to press the button to trigger and therefore capture. In short, so many moments which follow one another and become so important.
Later, there will be other moments, those of a peaceful look at an image drawn on a beautiful palpable paper, which we gently handle as many times as we wish!. It’s a whole story lived and perhaps not, which emerges on paper and which for certain images comes back to memory.
Today a question also arises: with this return to the past and this revival of the almost bi-centenary film, (first photograph taken in the summer of 1827 by its inventor Nicéphore Niépce: “the Point of view of the Gras” image of story captured on his property, in Saint-Loup de Varennes in Saône et Loire) are these observations synonymous with a permanent coming and going in our time, or simply as large waves always are, a passing tendency to old times, with a certain nostalgia? In all this, there is first of all for this youth, a great curiosity, a certain thirst for knowledge, to know what our elders were able to invent, create, develop then, over the years that followed, what pioneers passed on to us.
Today, in this return to film photography, young people want to discover for themselves what happened before the digital age. With it is the ardent desire to approach authentic cultural times, with real images, imprints that we fix forever, those of different passages…The approach of these young people appears modern and noble to us, the reverse of permanent consumerism.
It is true that analog photography forces us to embrace and master old ways of thinking, acting and photographing differently. These young people are right to want to know what has been experienced and achieved before, they are not mistaken!
Jacques Revon
Honorary journalist, author, photographer
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Revon
