I know this is a bit of a hard thing to write about (without translating the entire book). A year ago, I asked my public library to order a book for me. Since the only place to get it was in France, I thought my suggestion would fall straight in the thrash bin. But to my surprise, they called me last week to tell me my book had arrived!
So I rushed to get it and read it cover to cover in record time. The book is titled "La photographie pauvre, du stenope au telephone cellulaire", a long title which translated roughly to "Poor photography - from pinholes to camera phones". In this case, poor relates to the lo-fi movement.
The book is co-written by various authors, all of them scholars. I must say the book can be somewhat hard to read as very technical in a strange way. It would be simpler to say the book should be read with a dictionary on the table (even for fluent French speakers!).
The book contains three texts. The first one relating to photograms and cheap cameras. The second is an interview with somebody specialized in neuroscience and perception... a short article which I didn't get the point of in the context of this book. The third is about how people are teaching kids photography and photomontage in French schools.
The book being well illustrated, is pleasant to the eye (at least one picture every two pages) and printed on nice thick paper.
The first part, the longest, is heavily based in art history. Making multiple links to artists like Dubuffet.
A short summary:
The history of lo-fi photography traces its roots back to the 19th century and evolved in a parallel fashion with regular photography. They qualify these techniques of "archaizing" (looking for archaic looking images). As early as the 1830's, photograms were made. They were a way to document the world, but also done as a search of aesthetic expression (scientists made them look good).
But it's not until Dadaism and Surrealism came along that images moved from the simple documentation to the art world. Camera-less images, poor subjects, out of focus and soft focus became common place. Photograms from Christian Schad (as mesmerizing as Man Ray's work) and Moholy-Nagy's more formal works opened the door to things that were excluded from the art world (like thrash, everyday objects, strange techniques...)
But the techniques used were still not related to the lo-fi movement like they are today.
The term "photographie pauvre" (poor photography) was only coined in the 80's, making a strong reference to "Arte Povera" and was described as a "search of technical simplicity".
But as early as the 70's, photographers had started to adopt alternative processes to produce their images.
The subjects also varied more than ever before, ranging from manipulation of historical facts to protestation or even marketing.
Many art projects are described... too many to list them all here. Many pinhole projects are very well described in detail. From Felten-Massinger's caravana obscura to Claire Lesteven's pinhole cistern, there are a lot of described projects.
There is also a lot of talk about the history of the classic Box and Polaroid artists.
But I feel the most important part of this section is probably a quote from Carlos Canovas' manifesto "The cheap camera: rejection or fun?" :
"1 - the importance of the non-visible in the image.
2 - In favor of order at the expense of detail.
3 - The importance of the idea (conceptual aspect).
4 - The acceptation of the unforeseeable.
5 - The camera is used like a toy."
The style is also qualified of being "integrated art" or an "aesthetics of everyday".
In the 1990's, new photographic techniques which we could qualify of making images "directly archaic" start to show up. A new type of instant photography, a new search of imperfection. These images have been labeled as being "the good bad photo". But such a good concept had to fall into hardcore capitalist hands sooner or later. Thus the Lomography movement was born.
Many artists made the transition from low-tech film cameras to low quality digital cameras. One of the first to do so was Caroll' Planque, with her internet site "diary, Plastic Moon" (now sadly offline).
"In all cases, these young artists refuse to use the costly technologies of professional photography; both out of necessity (lack of money) and by taste, they prefer to use cheap means and, even more, create new expression spaces at a time when the doors of most galleries and museums are closed, only with a few exceptions, to low-fi photography or photography which can be said to be archaic."
I think this pretty much sums up the important first chapter in the book...
The number of listed artists (and most were unknown to me) is quite staggering!
Hope you enjoyed this. I could elaborate some more if anybody wants me to
