When I think back to my childhood and when I think of today, the idea of what is worth being captured and looked at in photography has expanded and changed fundamentally. You could say the photographic eye is insatiable - every smartphone camera roll is a testament to this, and nothing - neither technology nor cost - can stop us nowadays from capturing the world in hundreds or thousands of pictures.

While text or paintings were originally seen as an interpretation of an event, photography did not seem to make statements about the world. It was rather a fragment, a miniature of reality, so to speak. There is little left of the assumption that a person captures reality through a camera - mainly through cropping, retouching and manipulating, photography has also become an interpretation of the world. Can we trust an image nowadays? Has it really been taken or has it been artificially created?

This is where the appeal of analogue photography comes in: it feels different.
It seems to capture the essence of the moment in a way that is still authentic and timeless.
Analogue photos have a soul of their own: Reality blends with our own rules of taste.

The pictures we take are also somehow linked to our subconscious mind:

Photography is the appropriation of the photographed object. When I think of my holiday pictures of Tampere, I certainly have the desire to put myself in relation to my favourite country - Finland.

Photography is captured experience, it gives people the imaginary possession of the past.
The photograph is a narrow slice of space and time - an object of melancholy that harbours the desire to hold on to the experience and the vanishing time.

My sentimentality towards this medium certainly stems from the fact that my entire childhood was captured in analogue form; the analogue photos got glued into albums or stored in frames. Photography manages to transform the past into a lovingly observed object. These photos are evidence of my existence - they portray me at a certain point in my life. In no way would I ever doubt that these photos of my childhood do not show real moments.
To this day this longing for the genuine and unadulterated has remained.

The less styled, the less artistically produced, the more natural a photo is, the more likely it is to be considered credible. Of course, analogue photos can also be manipulated and retouched, but that is not the purpose - it is the rawness and the imperfections that make them magical, authentic and honest.

Reading tip: Susan Sontag - On photography (German version available: Susan Sontag – Über Fotografie)

Analogue photos of Tampere, Finland | summer 2024

Camera: Leica Minilux
Film: Portra 160 – developed by Cyberlab

You would like to see more analogue photos?
Check out my analogue photographs of Tampere in autumn 2023.