On my ride to school today I was scrolling my instagram feed where I saw San Francisco-based photographer Bex Finche's post.
Bex, a film photographer, re-posted a photo from a few months ago taken on a rainy day with a person standing and holding their umbrella that flipped inside out from the wind, writing that this morning a video was released from that day.
That man holding his umbrella flipped is Paavo Steinkamp, host of American Hipster Presents, a new documentary - "Video Portraits of American Trendsetters"from 10 cities across the country.
Today's episode features Bex, her photography, iphoneography, where she talks specifically about instagram and her project documenting her father's alzheimer's disease.
Bex talks about instagram in a way I haven't looked at before. She says that she uses it as practice, composing her photos every time she uses it each day. For the most part I thought instagram as more of a scenes to people's lives or behind the scenes of companies and brands. That's not the way Bex has used IG, and not why I was so attracted to her that I began following her some time last year. Bex uses instagram as if it were a quick platform for digital photos from her daily scenes, but being as serious as if it were photography-just with a phone. Since she is heavy film photographer generally her only digital shots would be from her phone that go to her instagram. It makes perfect sense that as a film photographer she uses her phone as a tool for quicker results while still using her fundamentals of composition and light that she definitely uses in her film work. Which is why her instagram looks better than most.
Bex says she prefers using film because of the way it is more intentional, where she is thinking more about about composing things versus just shooting away with digital. She says that film cameras are reliable, give beautiful photos, have a forgiving quality, give different tones, have a more tangible component to them, and allow room to make work more convenient or better but require a little more effort and time.
She also discusses her father's alzheimer's and it's impact on her photography, which has hertrying to emulate him - his condition and state, bringing the idea of being disconnected from the environment, and having listless mood reflected in her work. The continuation of taking self-portraits and taking photos of her father as his condition continues parallel one another, and can be seen as she is trying to understand what is happening to him and trying to put herself in his position to understand what he is going through.
The way Bex talked about the different quality and nature of film reminds me of film photographer who are clear example of what she talks about, work from those who I especially enjoy and follow inlcude Jeff of 12fv and Sisilia Piring, The Sunday Huddle, Extra Bigger, and the blog Terroriss.
Bex's project on her dad is similar to other long term projects that photographers take on where they document people as they change and grow, but specifically observing them through the photos they take. Elizabeth Weinberg has done this with her younger sister and Irina Werning has done something similar with her Back to the Future projects where she take portraits of people in a way that compares themselves of their youth and as adults.
For more on Bex Finch see her website and her instagram @bexfinch.
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