Launching these days The Defective Photographer.
Why defective? Because The kind of photography I’m doing today is as defective as I am.
I’ve been committed with perfection for decades. But…what is perfection? Am I perfect? Can I make something perfect?
Perfection is very subjective. Who can say he or she is perfect? We all know we are imperfect. Nevertheless we are looking for perfection, in everything we make.
Is perfection a possible goal?
In my opinion, perfection is not reachable. If we truly wanted to discuss perfection we deliver to our clients, we have to consider what do we personally intend with perfection.
For me, perfection is consisting of two goals. The first one is attendance and commitment to meeting customer’s goals. The second point is subsidiary to the first one. That is delivering the best image quality possible, technically speaking.
I mean, the most important thing for my perfect work is first of all to meet the target as it is set by the client. The technical aspects, such as a sharpness, definition, purity of colors, depth of lights and shadows, and so on, is secondary. Yes, megapixels, digital noise, histogram… all those abused, normal qualities we all are looking for in a common digital picture nowadays, don’t matter to me anymore.
I have dropped commercial photography, years ago. I have dropped digital photography for good. I’m not interested in spending my time in front of a computer and challenging the pixel. It doesn’t make me happy. Today I’m back to analog photography, intended as a chemical experience with photography.
Not only film, perhaps in black and white silver-Gelatin. Not only fine art Barytha photo paper. I’m back to deal with the basic compounds which made photography the art we know today. I am back to do my work as a photographer in the same way early photographers where doing more than a century and a half ago.
I am back to analog photography made in a darkroom, in a lab, with raw chemicals. I spend my time measuring substances and mixing acids to make my own sensitive silver-based materials, such as glass negatives, tintypes, salt paper, platinum-palladium, collodion, carbon, Van Dyke, and so on.
My analog photography is kind of alternative photography today. Alternative to digital for sure.
My analog photography is almost totally handmade.
It’s made by me in person. With my hands, my skills, my experience. I am back to my roots for to make something new. The sensitive materials that I prepare on my own are never the same.
Inconsistency of the result is part of the process. It’s unexpected, and it’s always a surprise if it comes out good. Everything I make is full of defects. Collodion maybe is not properly stuck on the glass. Salt solution is not properly soaked on the sheet of paper. The chemicals are blended in a different way than what the formula I’ve written on my notebook says.
Every time the result is a new discovery. It can’t be compared to a perfect digital picture like the one any smartphone is capable today. My art is defective. I’m aware of that. That’s why I like it and that’s why I am ‘the defective photographer’ today.
