Snapixel magazine
issue 8
analogue November/December 2010
Contents 06 10 26 38 46 52 62
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The Cult of Photography In the Age of Kodachrome Mosaic of a Life Hotels and Hostels The Russians are Coming Analogue Explorations Q&A
Snapixel Magazine Snapixel I TheMagazine Ne w Documentarian I Analogue I I 03 03
Editor Kaitlyn Ellison
Art Director Adam Oliver
Writer/ Copyeditor Robin LAm
Contributing Photographers: Parker Fitzgerald SEan GIn denis Khripyakov Jamie Livingston MAtt Powers Steven richmond Piper Robbins
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learned about the discontinuation of Kodachrome in a photography class my senior year of college. It was a class about experimental photographic processes —an exploration of the dying arts of photography. That semester I shot Kodachrome for the first time, as well as large-format polaroid film —after it had already been discontinued. I also did a project on gum printing (an art that involves mixing watercolor paint with gum arabic and potassium dichromate). That semester was one of the most frustrating of my life —I spent hours on these projects and never did end up making a print I liked.
My experience with outdated technologies perhaps mirrors that of other photographers: it was irritating, time-consuming, expensive, and impractical. Yet, all of this frustration did not stop me from loving analogue photography. There’s a sense of adventure and impermanence. Working with film is infinitely more unpredictable than digital —there are so many things that can go wrong. So just in time for the final month of Kodachrome developing, this issue of Snapixel Magazine is dedicated to honoring the films that have attracted such cult-like followings. For those who haven’t seen much film photography before, I hope you find something that you would like to try yourself. For all my fellow cult-followers, I hope this issue brings back memories of your own trials and errors with analogue. Either way, enjoy! Kaitlyn
Cover: September 5th, 1985, by Jamie Livingston P. 2-3: Pyongyang, North Korea, by Steven Richmon P. 4-5: Image by Denis Khripyakov
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The cult of Photography By Robin Lam, Photographs by Sean Gin
Mama always said there was never a party that didn’t end. Just like college, Harry Potter, and the SUPER NES, some things just can’t last forever. But still, it’s a little sad. When Kodak announced last summer that they were stopping production of their signature Kodachrome film, a collective wail emerged from the throats of oldschool photographers around the world. Following on the heels of Polaroid’s discontinuation in 2008, Kodachrome’s end was the inevitable result of digital photography’s increasing popularity. Kodachrome was known for its vivid and vibrant colors and was a gold standard among professional photographers in the early days of color photography. It is perhaps most famous for the image ‘Afghan Girl,’ shot by Steve McCurry for the cover of a National Geographic issue in 1985. The girl’s piercing
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sea-green eyes seemed to jump out from a muted palette of earthy reds and blues, enrapturing the world outside of war-torn Afghanistan and catapulting Kodachrome to fame. In fact, McCurry was given the very last roll of Kodachrome film ever made, the contents of which will become part of a National Geographic documentary next year.
pieces of our society since 1948, became the quintessential symbol of the easy and happy-go-lucky American family life. Family gatherings, vacations, daily life, your dog—everything became an instant artifact once it was on film. You were never sure how they’d come out; there was no previewing or going back to edit and crop before printing, you got what you took.
The film was admired for its color reproduction, smooth tonal range, and dark storage properties. It was developed in 1935, only seven years after the first television set and was a revolution in color photography— by far the highest quality color film you could get for many years. But by the time the decision to end production was made, Kodak reported that Kodachrome had fallen to less than one percent of the company’s total still-picture film sales.
Though digital cameras can show a picture right after you take it, you can’t touch it, hold it, or watch the magic of film developing in front of your eyes. When you dig through messy closets and stumble upon shoeboxes filled with old photographs of frowning babies, retro Christmases, and forgotten acquaintances, your eyes immediately light up like you’ve found a hidden treasure. That doesn’t happen when you find a memory card lying around.
Film enthusiasts received a similar punch in the gut in 2008 when Polaroid announced that it was shutting down production of its eponymous instant film. The iconic square, white-bordered photographs, which captured bits and
It’s true that Polaroid photos would fade, that their colors were often off, and that they sometimes had streaks running through them, but looking back, that was part of their appeal. The faded and slightly
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blurry Polaroid images invoke a faraway and romantic feeling similar to that of happy childhood memories—whether you actually had any or not.
Today’s digital cameras undoubtedly ease the photographic process, allowing us to view, edit, and evaluate what we photograph as we go. Large sensors allow us to capture an amazing amount of information in extremely low light situations—an impossibility on film—all while saving a whole lot of money that would’ve been spent on buying, developing, and printing film. Yet the crystal clear results that digital can bring us is having a backlash among some who feel that digital is too perfect for their tastes. Alongside the demise of Kodachrome and Polaroids, there’s been a resurgence in popularity of toy cameras such as Holgas and Lomos. These plastic cameras, by all means unsophisticated and somewhat poorly made, are loved for their off-kilter exposure, blurry results, over-saturated colors, streaking, and “happy accidents.” Leaks and low-quality lenses create blurred, glowy effects that some enthusiasts liken to a dreamy nostalgia, bringing to mind similar emotions that surround the use of Polaroids. The imperfect, un-pristine quality of the images, paired with the novelty of using film in a digital age, have made toy cameras popular again for the first time since they were introduced in the 1960s. Ironically, the popularity of the toy-camera-film-look has been
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furthered in recent months by digital platforms such as Hipstamatic, Instagram, DailyBooth, and PicPlz. iPhone photography and mobile photo sharing are the newest obsession in social media, raking in avid followers and million-dollar investments. With the ease of a swipe and a touch, users can change their virtual lenses, filters, flashes, and film, shoot a ‘photo,’ and then upload them onto various social networking feeds for something like a photo-Twitter effect. Filtering programs like Instagram allow users to instantly see their picture undergo a drastic artsy vintage-fying change—perhaps a vignette here, a splash of pink there, or scratches and smudges throughout. The Instagram logo is even a small graphic
vintage’ photos, like Polaroid and Kodachrome, are cherished. It’s not only because of the time, love, and spontaneity that they originated in, but because of the past that they remind us of and the history that we associate with them. In 10 or 20 years, there is no doubt that future technological advances will make even our current digital photography look hokey and outdated. There’s no need to rush the process with premature aging program. Though the majority of professionals have switched to digital photography, the loss of Kodachrome and Polaroid is similar to the feeling you get when you go home for summer break and find that your childhood corner store—which was the only
“Though digital cameras can show a picture right after you take it, you can’t touch it, hold it, or watch the magic of film developing in front of your eyes.” of a Polaroid camera. Subtle? Not so much. Is this faux-nostalgia, or a subconscious cry to a return of film photography? Probably the former (why go back to film when you can create the same effect in digital?), but it doesn’t hurt to hope. We associate good times with the past, the golden age. What’s worth thinking about is why ‘real
place that sold your utmost favorite old-school soda pop—shut down a couple months before due to bad business. No more soda pops, no more film. As we become increasingly digital and film photography drifts further into a niche filled only by enthusiasts, the rich history of these films is worth recognizing and appreciating as we continue along our quick march towards digital domination.
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In the AGe of
Kodachrome Photographer Steven Richmond embraces Kodachrome in its final days to explore the film in its truest form: Travel Photography. Here we present images from North Korea, the United Kingdom, Syria, and Lebanon to show Kodachrome’s capacity for capturing the world.
By Robin Lam, Photographs by Steven Richmond
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hen Kodak first introduced Kodachrome film in 1935, black and white film was still the standard in everything from family photos to magazine spreads. However, this new film had several improvements over its predecessors which allowed color film to become easy to use—it produced images without the heavy grain of other color processes, could be enlarged without losing detail, and was magnificently archival. Significantly, it was much faster than other color films, allowing photographers to compose and shoot spontaneously without necessitating a tripod. National Geographic magazine was the first to pioneer the use of Kodachrome in 1937, sending out photographer W. Robert Moore to shoot in Austria. With Kodachrome, Moore was able to capture action photography—cattle herders leading their cows—in color on 35mm film, something never accomplished before. The vivid, "iridescen[t]" color was "just something that color photographers had never dreamed of," a lab technician stated in a retrospective book, The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery. Through the work of National Geographic photographers and other publications, Kodachrome became strongly associated with travel photography—exotic locales, beautiful scenery, and moving photographs. By the time American tourism took off in the 1950s, Kodachrome was the most commercially successful color film in production. But as film and all its manual labors were gradually eclipsed by digital photography, Kodachrome was hit especially hard because of its complicated and precise production and processing demands. With a plummeting demand in the market and increasing costs in production, Kodak was forced to retire the iconic film in 2009 saying through a press release that “the majority of today's photographers have voiced their preference to capture images with newer technology.” Unsurprisingly, photographer Steven Richmond first discovered Kodachrome film after he heard about its imminent retirement. Born after the Baby Boom generation, Richmond was drawn to the film as an opportunity to participate in something historical. “When I looked into what Kodachrome was, there was a lot of discussion about its iconic status and historical significance,” he says. “Steve McCurry’s famous Afghanistan photographs taken in the 1970s were shot using it [and] I wanted to try it too, before it was too late.” Richmond credits the vibrant colors that first attracted photographers to the film in the 1930s as part of Kodachrome’s lasting appeal. “I 12
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think the colors are quite saturated with Kodachrome. People often talk about how the reds look really red. There’s some truth in that. There’s a definite ‘look’ or aesthetic to the images, which you don’t get with modern color film or digital photographs.” However, he acknowledges certain advantages of digital over an archaic film like Kodachrome. “Practically speaking, it’s not a film I’d use for a lot of things. It’s quite difficult to shoot with [in comparison to] modern films.” This comment is telling and illustrates the extent to which digital has replaced film in the past few decades. “Great images can be captured using many mediums, whether that is film, a digital sensor or a paintbrush,” Richmond emphasizes, declining to choose a preference between film and digital. “I think it’s really up to the photographer to choose the medium that suits them.” Nevertheless Richmond shows great subtlety and variation in his recent Kodachrome work. His quiet, deliberate approach brings to life seemingly mundane daily scenes, while loud festive parades and circus scenes are captured from afar, quietly imposing in their photographic symmetry as well as their portrayal of the sheer magnitude and might of their subjects (point in case: North Korea). “I [photograph] with an open mind, not really formulating a narrative until I see and edit my images,” Richmond says. “[In] a country like North Korea, you don’t really have a lot of scope to deviate too far from what you are presented with. The images I captured are hopefully transparent to the viewer. I was being presented with a view, and I recorded that.” It makes sense that, with contraptions like the iPhone, the Internet, and walking, talking, expression-capable robots from Japan, honky-dory processes like Kodachrome would eventually become obsolete. But Richmond shows that even modern photographers newly introduced to Kodachrome can produce images with a distinctive aesthetic using the iconic film. “To think that previous generations used this film because there was nothing else, and that when it came out it was technology at its best, really does put things into perspective,” he says when pressed about his view of Kodachrome as inspiration. But ultimately, photography—whether film or digital—is about the exploration of a moment: “We all have a creative side which I want to explore a bit more [as a photographer]. The ability to create a permanent record of a moment is quite an allure that never goes away.”
Park of Spontaneous Dancing, Pyongyang, North Korea ,
Grand People’s Study House, Pyongyang North Korea P. 10-11 The Grand Mass Gymnastics and Artistic Perofrmance Arirang, in the Rungrado May Day Stadium, Pyongyang, North Korea
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Kim Il-Sung Square, Pyongyang, North Korea
Above: Tory Political Conference, Manchester, England
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Below: Inside a 1970s Parliament that was built but never used, Edinburgh, Scotland
Royal Navy Cadets in Trafalgar Square, London, England
“When I looked into what Kodachrome was, there was a lot of discussion about its iconic status and historical significance. Steve McCurry’s famous Afghanistan photographs taken in the 1970s were shot using it [and] I wanted to try it too, before it was too late.”
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“Communist Phil,” Ballymoney, Northern Ireland
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At the Races, Beirut, Lebanon
Tea with breakfast, Aleppo, Syria
“To think that previous generations used this film because there was nothing else, and that when it came out it was technology at its best, really does put things into perspective.�
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Below: Palmyra, Syria
Above: Krak des Chevaliers (a Crusader fortress), Syria
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Hotel, Beirut, Lebanon
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mosaic of a life
One photograph a day. 18 years. By Robin Lam, Photographs by Jamie Livingston
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Livingston and a friend lounging in the pool. The photograper is on the right.
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and I went to school,” says Hugh Crawford, one of Livingston’s best friends and the main force behind the exhibition of the Photo of the Day (P.O.D.) project. The exhibit itself consisted of an 8x120 foot wall covered with 8-foot by 24-inch panels of photograph print outs. Though it was meant as part of the coordination effort for the exhibition, to its early viewers, the website was a mysterious entity that presented the photographic diary of an unnamed man—18 years of memories floating unhinged in cyberspace.
Project 365 is something that most people in the photographic community are familiar with. The rules are simple: Everyday for a full year, take a photo of anything, anyone, anywhere. Most photographers who have tried this project can attest to how difficult sustaining the endeavor actually is. Not to say that the photographing itself is hard—you could take 365 pictures of your cat and it’d be a project—but that it’s much more difficult to find something different everyday that’s somehow meaningful and reflective of your life at that given moment. Even if you’re not particularly picky about your photographs or are just one of those people who can snap a satisfactory photo at any given time, there are plenty of potential problems that could weaken your resolve. Where do you store the photos? How do you organize them? How do you remember to take them? Who’s gonna look at them? What’s the point? Simply not getting bored of the project is itself something of a challenge. Now image doing this for 18 years. Without a digital camera. Without blogs, Facebook, or Flickr. That’s dedication. Jamie Livingston (1956-1997) took a Polaroid every day for 18 years. From day one as a 22-year-old college student at Bard College to the day he passed away on his 41st birthday, Livingston documented his hilarious, quirky, and sometimes tragic life with a Polaroid SX-70 camera. When Livingston’s 6,000-plus photographs were first discovered by an Internet blogger, the website hosting the photos weren’t even intended for the general public to view. “[The project] was originally put online mostly as a convenience for a handful of friends [who] were organizing it for a show at Bard College where Jamie
What started out as a project on a whim became a steadfast documentary of the emotional power of one man’s dedication to life, friends, and New York City. Like an old stop-motion film, the images flash by your eyes one by one, and you can’t help but wonder why you feel so moved. Individually, these Polaroids aren’t all works of art. The resolution is low-quality, photos are blurred, and some are taken about nothing at all. Yet since the Internet world discovered Livingston’s P.O.D. in 2008, it has become a phenomenon, spreading like fire through blogs around the world and picked up by several major newspapers and news organizations. “It was very much a surprise to me,” Crawford says about the popularity of Livingston’s work. “It was one of those things that sort of leaked out somehow. The first thing I knew, all of a sudden all of my websites had gone offline because my webhost had been overwhelmed by traffic. In the first year or so, you’d suddenly get tens of thousands of people in Amsterdam or in Belgium looking at it for some reason.” People around the world were drawn to the photographs in different ways, finding their own meaning in Livingston’s work. “Apparently it’s really a big deal in China. [The Chinese] believe things that happen on the days of their birth are very portentous, sort of an omen. So what has happened is that Chinese young people born between 1979 and 1997 look up the picture that was taken on the date of their birth and put it on their blog. Then other people see that and they go look up the day that they were born too, and of course you always get a few people who say, ‘Oh this is really neat,’ and they go look at all six and a half thousand of them. Every so often there is this huge, huge, huge wave of traffic of people in China who are looking at [the website]. That was as much of a surprise as anything.” Undoubtedly, part of the P.O.D.’s impact comes from the massive scale of the project, but the real allure comes from images themselves—unabashedly simple, ordinary, and utterly mysterious. Who was this man? Who are all these people and what are these photographs for? Why are there accordians, elephants, and Fruit Loops? And when you finally realize the true nature of the project: How crazy must this guy have been to do this for 18 years? Livingston himself was something of an enigma to even his close friends. “One of the things that’s really interesting is that he seemed to have a different personality, a different side of him depending on who he was with,” Crawford recalls of his friend. “He was really was sort of good at bringing a lot of people together and forming a community around himself. He had an easy way of making commitments to do things, which is one [reason] he was very loyal to his friends. He would regularly host a Thanksgiving dinner for all of his friends who were orphans—either actual orphans or just people who were the New York City orphans who moved to NYC
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and weren’t in touch with anybody. A big Thanksgiving dinner for all of his friends who were estranged from their families in one way or another.” As a photographer, circus performer, filmmaker, MTV video editor, cinematographer, and Mets fan, Livingston seemed to be a magnet for all sorts of amusing and interesting things. But perhaps the reason he was always in the thick of things was simply that he appreciated life more than average individual. “He had a succession of illnesses all the time that I knew him,” Crawford explains. “He thought he had colitis but it turns out he had Crohn’s disease and was misdiagnosed for years and years. In fact, the first time I met him he was introduced to me as ‘somebody who wasn’t expected to live through college.’ That may be one of the reasons why there’s so much intensity [in his work]. It was a matter of living in the moment.” Livingston’s photographs were for himself, not to seek the admiration of others. His carefree images lack the forced feel of photographs that are composed simply to grab attention. Perhaps that shot of a half-eaten baked potato was what he had for dinner one night. Perhaps it meant something. Maybe not. A bowl of cherries became as beautiful as a work of art. Crawford recalls to me a tradition in which every year Livingston 30
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would run across mid-Manhattan with the elephants from the Ringling Brothers Circus (apparently for some arcane reason the trainers would walk the elephants through the midtown tunnel and across 34th street to Madison Square Garden at midnight). “Word had gotten out that the night before the first day of the circus, elephants would run across town at midnight, so of course there are a whole bunch of people that go too. But I remember there’s at least one time where we did [the elephant run] and I said [to Livingston], is this gonna be the photograph of the day? And he said, ‘No no, the sun was shining on this bag of potato chips today so I did that instead.’” But to many of Livingston’s admirers, this simplistic trait in his photography was part of its appeal. “Some of [the photographs] are just breathtakingly beautiful. There’s a picture of a bowl of cherries and [once] you look at it, your mental, visual dictionary of what a bowl of cherries looks like is pretty much that because it’s just so perfect.” In exploring and poring over Livingston’s photographs, we unconsciously bring a part of ourselves into the project as well—our own ideas and lives become a reflection of how we interpret his. Crawford himself feels that there are two distinct reactions to Livingston’s work that illustrate a generational
divide with respect to how the P.O.D. project is interpreted. “People in their 50s, but his friends in particular, sort of look at it as this incomplete life,” Crawford explains. “He died on his 41st birthday, there’s so much potential that didn’t happen—sort of sense of loss and everything. The younger generation, people in their 20s in particular, see it as this amazing thing: ‘Gee, if I’m really, really lucky I could have a life as cool as his.’ So for the younger generation it’s this sort of an inspirational thing.” “He never really talked about the project but you could get the sense that it was obviously really important to him,” Crawford says. Four suitcases, one fruit crate, and six and a half thousand meticulously labeled Polaroids could not have been made to satisfy a simple whim. Livingston didn’t try to convince you that he was somebody. His photographs merely show us what was ordinary in his life, which has now become extraordinary to ours. We are drawn to his project because these images are what make up real life. Ordinary unimportant things, friends, and random events. This endeavor speaks to us on a very basic intuitive level because in his hopes, struggles and joys, we see reflections of ourselves and are reminded of the passion with which we hope to live our lives.
“Why are so many complete strangers drawn to this project? There’s some sort of ambiguity to it, like the expression of the Mona Lisa. In some ways it’s really easy to read what’s going on, but you’re bringing so much of yourself to it to figure it out.” - Hugh Crawford
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1979 1980
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September 8th 32
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We liked the idea of choosing one day in the year to trace Jamie’s life between 1979 and 1997. The following photographs were all taken on September 8th of their respective years. Can you find a story in them?
1983
1984
1985
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1986
1990 1991
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1988
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1993 1992
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“People in their 50s, but his friends in particular, sort of look at it as this incomplete life. [But] the younger generation, people in their 20s in particular, see it as this amazing thing: ‘Gee, if I’m really, really lucky I could have a life as cool as his.’”
1994
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To see the entire Photo of the Day project, visit: photooftheday.hughcrawford.com
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H o t e ls a n d HOstels
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Surveying temporary living spaces and shooting with 120 film, photographer Matt Powers shows us the possibilities when working with squares.
Explore the transitory life with images from the Rush Lake Motel of Gainsville, Florida and the USA Hostel of San Francisco, California, to the Homeplus Hostel in Budapest.
Yashica Mat - 124, 6x6 on 120 film
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photos by Denis Khripyakov illustrations by kaitlyn ellison
The Russians are Coming Russian Cameras, That is
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Not only do films have cult followings, but Cameras do too. In this case, it’s the russians - Photographer
Khripyakov
shows us the particular style of the
Largest country in The world.
Denis
FED 5
Zenit-E
Belomo Vilia
-Denis Khripyakov
“I try and take photographs as much as possible. Each shot is in the moment - in a time when I can really feel something, and when I want to keep that feeling. I press down the shutter because I can, because I have to - it is as necessary for my life as breathing is. I shoot the ordinary objects in life, whether it be a lonely horse on a sour russian field or the Post-Soviet lost and destroyed design. I see in them new life - pure and simple.�
Hasselblad Kodak 400 NC
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“This is my Dad. He had just gotten that hot tub and was really proud of it. This picture IS my father. I wouldn’t explain to anyone through words who my father is, I would just show them this photo. That’s what I am as a photographer—this is what I strive to do with my work. I try to capture the perfect fraction of a second. In my opinion, this was that moment.”
Photographer
Piper Robbins
Writer
De Blennis
Photographer Piper Robbins shoots only in film. She shows us a selection of her portfolio here, hand-selected images accompanied by captions written by De Blennis.
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Hasselblad Pro Color Fuji 800 “I started to become obsessed with the way water and light interact. The color here was perfect, and the image is a happy accident that captures that interaction.�
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Hasselblad Pro Color Fuji 800
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“This is one of the few times I used a tripod. I never really used one in school, which I got a lot of flak for. I find my camera is constrictive anyway, because of the weight and waist finder—a tripod just makes it more cumbersome.”
Mamiya RB67 Expired Provia 100
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Mamiya RB67 Expired Provia 100 “The film was given to me as a donation. In school, my teachers gave me bags of film just because they knew how dedicated I was to film. This image is a product of that—I shot it for an editorial class”
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Polaroids, Philosophy & THeology Putting a new twist on an old idea, photographer Parker Fitzgerald’s ‘365 Polaroid Quotes’ combines beautiful photography with pithy quotations for a coffee-table-bookworthy collection of inspirational images. Interviewed by Robin Lam.
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Q&A
Parker ftizgerald
What was your goal for this project? I found myself without any projects at the start of the year and wanted to do something meaningful that would provide me with a design problem to solve each day. I originally wanted to draw something every day as the basis for the project, but photography won out because it was quicker. Why Polaroids? I decided to use Polaroids almost on a whim. At the end of last year, I was fairly bored with digital photography and wanted to do something different. As luck would have it, I had purchased
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a Polaroid Automatic 100 sometime earlier in the year and picked it up last December and started shooting with it. Things evolved from there. I mainly use a Polaroid 195 now. How did you decide to add text to your photographs? I’ve always cared about philosophy and theology and the bigger questions of life. I have always had a desire to share that interest with others. This was a small way in which I could bring more explicit meaning to my photos. None of the quotes are my own. All of the quotes are from people I find inspiring in one way or another.
What significance does this project hold for you? This project means a lot and means a little. On the one hand, it’s ‘just something I to do,’ but in a lot of ways, it’s actually come to define me. I’ve really poured a lot of myself into this project, from finding the film to investing in the cameras and searching for decent quotations. My interest in Polaroids has also branched out into other film types. I love medium format and 35mm now because I picked up Polaroid first. I’m not sure what I’ll do after this is all over, though, I still have a whole fridge full of film.
How do you think your experiences with this project and creating these images have changed you? Things have changed significantly for me. The photos aren’t always my favorite and the typography isn’t something I’m always proud of, but just the discipline of having to make sure something gets done for every day in the year has had so many positive implications in my everyday life. Most of my Polaroids get done late at night after I’ve laid aside my commitments for the day and finally have time to read through quotes for awhile. By then, I’m usually tired and want to just go to bed. It’s done wonders for my self-discipline to bust through that feeling everyday and get that last bit of work done before I turn in. That discipline transfers to so many different things—my regular work life, how easy it is for me to get myself up in the morning, and even how long I let myself sit in the shower, etc. As someone who’s worked for the last few years as a full-time freelancer, discipline is everything. There’s no work schedule forcing you to get up at 7am, no boss who’s going to ride your back to get the work done. It’s just you, the client, and no safety net. I consider doing the Polaroid quote like my daily mental trip to the gym. What makes your project different from other 365 Day projects? I’m not so certain how to answer that, actually. I didn’t really set out to be different than everyone else, per-se. I just wanted to create a practice exercise for myself. I suppose it’s different than most simply because the project involves 365 different Polaroids. The film is hard enough to come by without committing to use so much of it on something like this. The types of quotes I use are also a little different. There are a
lot of photos-and-text type things going around these days, but I don’t always tend to find those very intellectually interesting. Sappy, overly-romantic phrases can only go so far, I guess. I try to use words that hopefully spark an interest in people to think deeper about the lasting and meaningful things in life. What has been the reaction to this project? The project has been received far better than I had hoped—a lot of the Polaroids have been spread over blogs and Tumblrs and the like. Either way, people always love quotations—little quick, encapsulated ideas that they can pass around like trading cards or whatever. Putting something out daily that people can reblog easily (and at least find halfway interesting) has made all the difference, I think. What is your background as a photographer? What projects are you currently working on?
As a photographer, I’ve only been shooting for about a year and a half. I honestly had a very cursory interest in cameras until around April of ‘09. At some point, though, things just clicked and it’s grown since. Before then, I worked as a designer and before that I wanted to do illustration and concept design full time. I kinda work by doing a mixture of all those things now, as the opportunities arise (mostly photography, though). What inspires you as a photographer? If I have to answer this question succinctly, I’d say that wilderness, vintage things, and pretty women (haha) are what I find most inspiring and interesting to photograph. The more I can combine these things as I take my photos, the better. Ultimately though, I seek to reveal the transcendent aspect of beauty through art—even if I am only able to reveal just a glimmer at a time. Either way, the pursuit of beauty is something I consider a life-long endeavor.
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Where do you find the subjects of your photographs? Most of the subjects in my photos happen to also be my friends and those closest to me. I also occasionally work up the guts to ask strangers to model for me. The rest are people approaching me on a for-hire basis. Any additional comments or information you would like to add about your project? In the end, as I go through life, I try to come to a deeper understanding of things that are true and good and beautiful. This project is just a small way for me to share glimpses of what I find important with others.
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about the photographer: Parker Fitzgerald was born in Wisconsin, raised in Colorado, and currently lives near Portland, Oregon as a freelance visual artist. From an early age, Parker developed a taste for tractors, dinosaurs and video games that lead to a penchant for drawing, and an intense love of PokĂŠmon, philosophy, and theology. After having graduated from Colorado University with a business degree in marketing, Parker moved out to the west coast to pursue a career as a graphic designer. After two years, he becaome enamored with photography, and now owns more than two dozen different cameras, ranging from the digital high-end, down to the lomo. He is particularly fond of Polaroid Land Cameras and peel-apart pack film. Parker is an avid Chuck Norris enthusiast who shares his birth date (March 6) with both Michelangelo and the Battle of the Alamo. Parker is also single.
contact: Portfolio: cargocollective.com/parkerfitzgerald Flickr: flickr.com/photos/parkerfitzgerald Twitter: @parkerfitzhenry
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Photo by Piper Robbins
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We’re looking for the best For each issue of Snapixel Magazine we publish the best projects from the best photographers we can find. If you’re telling great stories with your camera, we’d like to see your work. We’re accepting submissions for future issues. Send a link of your current projects to kaitlyn@snapixel.com to be considered for publication.
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