It does seem like I'm always coming around here to tell you about things I'm really interested in, but haven't quite worked through all the implications. Sorry about that. It does seem like that is what blogging is for, so I hope you'll stay with me as I'm working through all these things.
Anyway, I've just discovered this free application, Poladroid Project, that will turn your digital photos into Polaroids (or, at least make them look like Polaroids-- washed out colors, white borders, and all). I love it. In a way I'm almost embarassed by, I love this application. Unlike some past applications that promise to make your photos look like Polaroids, this one gets the color change just right AND they've managed to get a decent scan of the texture of the white border-- to me that is the essence of what makes a Polaroid unique. You can spend entirely too much time in theif Flickr pool. Or is that just me?
Nostaliga, defined by Wikipedia as "a longing for the past, often in idealized form," has been at the center of my academic inquiries lately. Of course, it is also frequently at the center of my personal life too.
I sometimes wonder if the DIY culture's appropriation of antiques, polaroids, and vintage anything comes from a desire to move away from the sleek and hyper-stylized world of iPhones and laptops. In the 1950s, when technology was so fara way from what people really experienced, the ultra modern was appealing. Today, when technology is incresingly part of all our lives, the turn back to things made in the 1960s and 70s makes sense-- technolgoy then wasn't quite so scary (nuclear weapons an exception here), and we've filtered out how annoying it is to pay $1 per photo for Polaroid film.
Is it odd that we're faking old technolgy with our new, sleek, and super-powerful MacBooks? I kind of think so-- these fakes are so good, that I'm wondering when we'll be able to recreate the sense of wonder at old things? In a lot of ways, I think I can't stop looking at these because they have recreated the sense of old, history, and nostaligia.
Take some time to play around with this application-- you'll see what I mean.
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Submitted by Ashley Bowen on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 09:13.
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caricature of authenticity
Even though we all knew that film images could be highly manipulated in the darkroom, as consumers/producers/hobbyists we didn't really care that much about authenticity or aura of our snapshots, until digital photography forced us to start thinking about it. At the same time, even pre-digital, we recognized that there was something special about Polaroids.
Polaroid fim is sort of caricature of film itself, in the way that it magnifies/privileges authenticity - it's instant film, with no replicable negative, so a Polaroid photo is truly individual and unique and, at least in that uniqueness, authentic. All of the ambiguity about authenticity in comparing 35mm to digital kind of melts away when you use Polaroid film.
So I think, whether performed digitally or in actuallity (if, like me, you still own a Polaroid camera and stockpile the discontinued film whenever you have a spare $50), the invocation of the idea of a Polaroid is less about nostalgia and more about invoking the aura of Polaroid's unique claim to authenticity.
On the other hand, I think there is a sense in which invoking Polaroid-like visual cues is about nostalgia, but in a curious sort of nostalga that is not for Polaroid itself - which were never more than a novelty product - but rather nostalgia for film in general. I don't think that's entirely true, but an aspect.