In this Age of Digital and Instant Access, many photographers have developed (heh) nostalgia for film. Most have used film but many have not—I did once upon a time, and while I do miss certain looks and tones that seem to only be found when using film, there are too many benefits to digital to which I am addicted at the moment. It isn’t just film, though…it is the old cameras. Some of us may have seen or used these cameras as children. Some of us had them handed down from grandparents or parents. Some have never seen them before. But like the big old tube radios and the non-electric typewriter; like the classic car with the big bench seat in the back: you didn’t have to have had one to appreciate the beauty. In fact, not having experienced one might make you love it all the more!
Nostalgia is a love of the past tinged with sadness; the sense of loss romanticized. The idealizing of a past not personally lived is another phenomenon all together, yet we humans do it all the time. I call this experience “Nosphantia” Growing up in the 1980s as an awkward, lost teenager who discovered hippie philosophy and the drugs that went with it I was convinced I was miserable because I was born in the wrong era. I idolized everything ‘60s to the point where I actually looked like I had perhaps walked out of a time machine. Eventually I grew out of it, but I still have a soft spot for sixties memorabilia to this day, including those early SLRs and Polaroid land cameras.
The film for these old cameras can be difficult to come by, however. Cameras like the Leica, the Argus, Graflex, Hasselblad SW; the folding cameras of the 1930s like Voigtlander and Houghton; there is not only the film to find and purchase, but then the development cost since many of the formats are not common.
Enter “Through the Viewfinder” photography.
I have a growing collection of photographs I’ve begun to post on RedGage that are labeled “TTV” (Through the Viewfinder). What does this mean and isn’t every photograph taken “through a viewfinder?” you may ask.
What this means is that those of us who suffer from Nosphantia or even plain old nostalgia but don’t want to spend the money on film have found a compromise worth its weight in cameras. The method is simple: You use a digital camera to literally shoot the image that appears in the viewfinder of an old box camera (in my case, an Argus 75). The results are images with an instant vintage look because of the curved glass and natural wear and dirt in and on the old camera. I find the practice lends itself to the surreal and fantastical, and I can enhance the dreamlike effects by adding utilizing layers to really bring out the textures, sometimes even adding more textures.
The user “Mr. E.” on Flickr (though he changes his username often) is credited with discovering this technique and sharing it. Through him, Russ Morris became interested and a group was formed on Flickr called “Through the Viewfinder.” It has grown fast and is now at over 4,000 members. The only thing that might seem complicated about this method is the “contraption” as we TTV’ers call it. Because you need to have your digital camera at the right focal distance from your box camera, you need to build some sort of a contraption in order to block out the light. Russ Morris took up the baton and wrote a fantastic tutorial for building a folding one, but you can also study through the groups’ discussion threads for help with your specific camera. While the two cameras plus the contraption gets a lot of strange looks out in public, it is a great conversation starter! I and many others have used this method to create interesting self-portraits as well…a few people did a whole year of self-portraits using only TTV.
Through the Viewfinder photography can make the dullest thing seem interesting…and since ‘everything old is new again’…it seems to be well ahead of its time, too.
