Will we ever have vintage photos again?

1.30.90 - the grand opening of McDonald's in the USSR.

Up until the last 10 years, photos have had some sort of dated look to them, that essentially stemmed from a lack of clarity. The film grain, the digital distortion… when we gain certainty, we lose ambiguity. When we lose ambiguity, we don’t need our imagination. When we don’t need our imagination, there’s little left to separate us from machines.

Is the obsession with definition and information ruining us? Sure, you can talk about efficiency, and what makes sense monetarily, but is life better when we know less? With this you open up all sorts of avenues of thought. Sex, God, passion, exhilaration, joy - all of these things are unquantifiable. Seriously, think about it. Can you easily describe the best sex you’ve had with spreadsheets? Is there a Harvard study that points to the existence/lack thereof of a God or creator?

8.20.91 - Kurt Cobain in Ireland

Back to the original point. The unknown can be scary, but the only thing scarier than a world of unknowns is a world without them. Wonderance keeps us on our toes. It’s a mechanism for escape. Without our ability to wonder, we lose our imagination - one of the only remaining qualities we have setting us in a league above our computers.

So all-in-all, embrace the grainy photo that only tells half the story… the rest is yours to write.