Are the photos you take similar to those in your childhood album?
English author Danny Wallace states in Condé Nast Traveler UK that Instagram is erasing the happiest memories of our vacation. His thesis: that when we only photograph moments and perfect places, all those little moments funny, meaningful and important things pass us by.
"There were no digital cameras, so taking a photo was everything. an event. You had to ask the camera owner for permission. You had to convince him that it was a moment worth photographing . You couldn't go shooting anything: you had 36 possibilities , so you had to make each of them worthwhile, photograph only the best moments, "recalls the writer, recalling his childhood vacation.
However, those "great moments" could be perfectly the first night's dinner , "even if it was just egg and potatoes". In fact, Wallace is convinced that there is whole generations of Brits who, for whatever reason, have documented that first holiday dinner.
In Spain, and in a quick survey among my contacts, I also find picturesque cases, like that of that family that has a photo of one of them Taking a nap on each of their albums.
Likewise, the author also takes a look at his travel diaries, in which, when he was little, he would write down seemingly futile things: burn a pizza, mess with your friend , having seen a black dog. Reading them now brings you closer to the experiences really had , something that, after so many years, makes him especially happy.
"I think we fall into the error of only document what we would like to remember. The things that outline our journey as we think I should have gone. The things we instagram. But that means that we risk turning those memories into a package of stylized 'momentazos', into **a magazine report,** when what makes the trip real and important are the everyday things ".
THE PHOTOS WE WOULD NEVER TAKE TODAY
The idea behind Wallace's article has us wondering: What were our vacation photos like before? do what have we lost , and what have we gained, with digital technology? What kind of regards will we host in the future because of these changes?
I open one of my childhood albums, which my mother classified as Martha, volume 3. I'm looking for the vacations of my three years. you see my father inflating a gray boat; he sees me in a bathing suit, playing with the dog. We were still at home, so the report began with travel preparations.
Later, we are seen on the beach, picking mussels. Obviously, there is a photo of the mussels . And a picture of my father bloody and with teary eyes! He had slipped on the rocks trying to catch even more mussels, in a bivalve obsession that is somewhat extreme.
Would I have taken a photo of my husband now in those same conditions? What's more, would I have put it in an album ?! I don't see it likely. To begin with, because we don't have albums (there is the eternal project of making one, but for now it remains in a folder on the computer) . To continue, because perhaps it would have seemed to me something cruel to photograph it in those conditions.
However, seeing that snapshot of my father, so vulnerable, so human , seems to me something precious today, something that, without a doubt, set up that day on the beach. Perhaps my mother, the author of the portrait, also thought so.
WHEN WE WERE TOURISTS
Mark Ostrowski has been dedicated to the development of photos in Photo R3 , a store based in Gijón that started working in analogue just when the rest of the world I forgot how to do it. In fact, they are specialists in developing black and white.
Mark, of course, thinks it's nonsense that my album project remains virtual: "Most of the photos taken today are stored in memory cards and never make it to print, which is a mistake, because many of these images are destined to be lost ", warns him. (And he is right: like everyone else, I have suffered the deletion of several years of photographs not printed due to viruses, loss of devices, accidents...)
"Before, people bought their holiday reels, he took his photos and then, when he came back, he took out paper copies", recalls the expert.
The aquatic environment, one of the few places where we still prefer analog
When I mention this process among my acquaintances, one of them remembers: "The expectation to collect the photos of the development is incomparable with anything, and that no longer exists; Now everything is immediate.
"It was a process , and required a minimal investment in time and money" Mark adds. After the irruption of digital photography and _smartphone_s with cameras, few people carry analog cameras anymore... What little movement there is is from throwaway cameras, that are submersible, and are used on the beach".
Perhaps that investment, that having only a limited number of shots, made the photos of that time better than now ?
"Classic vacation photos used to have kids in the foreground. Family integrants and then the emblematic place or the background monument . They used to take good care of basic technical aspects -such as taking photos with the sun at your back-, and above all, the presentation and conservation of photographs in albums, in which the value of memories Mark explains.
"Ironically, today hardly any effort or knowledge to obtain correct images, but, in many cases, the quality of the photos has not improved . There are more self-portraits in current photos and, many times, it is sensed that ** selfies are more important ** than the place visited or the trip itself becomes a mere pretext to take selfies with a more colorful background", the professional reflects.
Looking for the lost spontaneity
"Paradoxically, today's photos are intended to be more spontaneous , but, to achieve this aspect of spontaneity, many photos are usually taken or shot in bursts ", he adds.
The curious thing is that, with the vast visual culture that we have today, our greatest desire is precisely to capture that naturalness that we intuit in the photos of our parents. Let's just look at the instagram filters , who seek 'spoil' the image resorting to the tones of the old cameras, with their defects and their underexposures.
However, despite this imposed desire to achieve spontaneity -unfailingly linked to our constant conquest of garments that at some point seemed ridiculous to us, like the mom jeans -, for ** Thalia Berral **, the photos of now are much better than before.
The artist today, who landed in the very popular Benalmádena at the age of 17 after having lived in France all her life, she helped her father during the 90s in one of those once ubiquitous store in 'revealed in an hour'.
There, the main clientele were "very seedy english tourists" who enrolled in group trips through Andalusia, although there were also experts who had to document car accidents, young people trying to reveal photos of parties or concerts (always dark, in her experience, because the use of the flash was so poor) and, of course, pornographic snapshots, that formed an interesting binomial together with another of her star impressions, the ID photos.
Thalia saw so many photos of the Olympic Games and of the exhibition that she today she feels like she was there, even though she never really was. The Moroccan flag, she remembers her, she was the most photographed, of course with her English tourist posing next to the monument on duty. The trending topic of that time.
"At that time, the people of Malaga did not travel, they didn't even have all telephone, so travel photos were rare. What was rather terrible photos of the Port of Benalmádena , when not veiled", she recalls.
Again, I turn to my friends: "What photos are in your childhood albums ?" I ask. Some, indeed, They neither had vacations nor a camera ; others, the majority, documented the day to day: the bath time , the baby fusses, the drive to camp, the silly afternoons whatever...
"Because of these things I imagine that Summer 1993 it has soaked so much; collects those moments with great affection", reflects Cristina G. Marfil, whose father was soaked in photography books before she was born to later portray her as a movie star . She today she is an actress, will she have something to do with it...?
Thalia concludes: "It is obvious that the snapshots are better now, cooler, and they are taken in very different, more exotic places. It's not just the evolution of digital, it's the purchasing power of the Spaniards, globalization".
HOME PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART AND PROCESS, AN EXTINCTING HOBBY
Josetxo Magpie he was a fan of photography who even went so far as to mount his own development studio at home. However, during his childhood he does not remember seeing family photos of trips. "Either my memory is weak or the only place I ever went with my parents on vacation was the village where they were from and the surroundings: some photos of the family eating among the poplars from my grandfather's orchard, the children climbed on a car. It has never occurred to me to take photos of the town; I prefer remember what it was to delve into what it is", he explains.
The mere act of documenting those important moments began to turn into something more serious in response to "the surprise and the disappointment of the initial photos , because I saw that they did not reflect even remotely what I remembered having had before my eyes, nor the intention that had encouraged me to throw the camera in my face".
For this reason, after a trip, an excursion or a family reunion, he gave himself to the handcrafted development process.
The development process at home was long and laborious
"The heaps of hours spent locked in solitude from that little room full of darkness and red light, listening to Radio 3 or Radio Clásica, finally ended up with a modest bunch of photos that testified to the event, but that they did not finish distancing themselves from the anodyne … There had to be some way to get closer to that rotundity that, to a greater or lesser degree, was seen in the generality of the photos of more or less professional photographers, "he said to himself.
That was the reason why he dedicated himself to reading about image composition , perspective, rules, etc., until, on a trip to Minorca, he began to notice that the snapshots of him were close to his ideal: "It could be said that the novelty consisted, more than in seeing things and turning them into photographs, in beginning to conceive things as photographs "he recalls.
"Through very rapid observation I became aware that in my environment there were a series of elements of landscape, people, architecture that, if he was able to find a way to combine them, a 'catapum' photo would come out. But to achieve this, most of the time I had to stop to work for a while while the others continued on their way. Then he had to catch up with them. Others had to radically change the point of view and down the slope to the beach to get back on the path after having achieved, sometimes not, the photo I was after".
This newly inaugurated eagerness led him to spend his vacations from one place to another, waking up, sometimes, before sunrise to go looking for the best points from which to photograph the sunrise.
Menorca awakened the inspiration of Josetxo
"I lost in ten days more kilos of those who have never lost. But it was worth it, because it's like riding a bicycle, never forget at all". He became so fond of the subject that, as he recalls, he once even shot 7,000 snapshots in a month.
However, among them it was not possible to find the typical picture of tourist-plus-monument , which curiously, began to explore with the arrival of mobile phones. "I don't see anything good about it and I don't like it. It seems to me like when someone records in a dolmen ' Pepe was here , but, personally, worse, because at no time does it cross my mind put on doubt who has been to the Parthenon who tells me that he has been. Or because it would seem to be taken for granted that the Parthenon without me in front is less of a Parthenon ".
In fact, now that the immortalization of the moment is within everyone's reach, he has gone disassociating himself from his hobby: "Coinciding with the generalization of digital photography, I gave it less importance to take photos. I dismantled the lab and I gave away the developer kit ", he explains. Even he no longer takes just the camera when he goes on a trip.
"If it were up to me alone, I would concentrate on taking photos in the context or circumstance that I wanted. When I decided to end the session, I would sit right there and watch them carefully and lightly while I catch my breath. Then I would delete them ".
New technologies have brought new ways of looking at reality
This attitude, so opposed to the millennial claim of accumulate and share Josetxo defends her in an infinite loop, assuring that he no longer aspires to "treasure good photographs", but is satisfied with " chase them and look for the right ", a process that, he says, reminds him of fishing in a river without death.
"Now I understand that Instagram is a bit alien to me, although I consider that photography by means of the mobile, due to the way in which many young people handle it from the beginning, is the contribution of one and many new ways to look ", concludes the fan.