Thoughtfactory: Leica poetics

Leica, film, snaps, chronicles, cliches

Posts for Tag: quartz

quartz x 2

This picture or representation of quartz was made whilst I was on a coastal poodlewalk in Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia with Maleko, our standard poodle,  in the late afternoon. It was made around the same time as this image which is on the same 35mm roll of colour negative film.

 If it was overcast in the afternoon we would often wander  amongst these rocks on the  poodlewalks,  as the afternoon light is behind us and the soft light brings out the muted and subtle colours of  the rocks and quartz. 

This representational image of quartz is deemed to be a document created using a  transparent medium to produce an image that is readily intelligible. Hence it is a cliche that needed to be subverted by opening up the photographic process to explore the  possibilities of the photographic mediation of the world. That rejection of photographic transparency is the perspective of art history's account of the history of photography and it highlights how the logic of  20th century modernism is a culture of negation.   

analogue nostalgia

The pictures below and over the page were made in 2021 whilst Maleko and I were on an afternoon  poodlewalk in  the littoral zone in Waitpinga in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of  South Australia. We often walk along this section of the coast in the late afternoon. Photographically speaking, this littoral zone  works best in low or flat sunlight. It is no good in the bright afternoon sunlight of summer.

The pictures were made  with  my Leica M4-P with a  rigid Summicron 50mm pre-asph lens. As mentioned in an earlier post the rangefinder  recently became salt damaged from a rogue wave surging over me whilst I was photographing.  Leica  in Germany have since informed me that the lens is kaput (ie.,  unrepairable), but that they can repair the camera body.   I have given the go ahead  to repair the camera and  I am hoping that the insurance will cover most of the cost of buying a second hand Summicron 50mm pre-asph lens. 

That decision means that I remain committed to what some call vintage photography that many understand in terms of being wrapped up in nostalgia. Though not born into a digital world, but subsequently embracing it, I accept that I am  a nostalgic photographer whose optimistic  belief in the digital future is becoming outmoded.  What then is analogue nostalgia?