Analog and digital photography: building a hybrid practice

I think I can say I belong to the last generation that grew up with analog photography as the only photographic technology.

I remember family holidays with my father and his Canon AE-1, comparing how many frames were left on the film with how many days of vacation remained, but I especially remember disposable cameras during school trips. I remember dropping off film rolls at the lab and getting them back a few days later, only to discover that half of the prints were marked “not charged” because the images were completely unusable.

In short, I experienced red-eye in birthday photos, overexposed portraits caused by an automatic flash that couldn’t be turned off, and unrecognizable images taken accidentally when the shutter was pressed without intention.

Authentic contact sheet from 1998. A large number of failed shots.

I cannot say precisely when digital photography first appeared, nor even when it truly became the dominant photographic standard. All I know is that the generation after mine very likely takes digital photography as its reference, with analog photography becoming only an alternative.

New rapprochement

When I began photography, I started with digital. The first camera I bought was a Nikon DSLR. So even though I mentioned earlier my “knowledge” of analog photography in the past, my practice was initially shaped by the use of digital technology.

In 2015, when I got started, digital cameras had reached maturity: they became more compact, they were expensive but still relatively affordable, and since I already had, like everyone else, a computer, I could immediately begin producing and, above all, see the results instantly.

Photograph taken in 2015, a few weeks after I started, with my first digital SLR camera.

Conversely, with analog photography, even if camera bodies were virtually free (which is no longer the case), consumables were expensive (and even more so today). It also required, in order to obtain the final images, going through an external lab or investing in equipment for film development, followed by a scanner and/or an enlarger. It therefore represents a significant investment and requires space.

So even though I considered a fully analog practice, it quickly became clear that the reasonable path was to begin photography with digital.

Nevertheless, very early in my career, digital and analog coexisted, the latter at least in a recreational way. I also remember borrowing my father’s Canon camera to shoot a few rolls.

Selfportrait with the Canon AE-1

It becomes serious

Gradually, the role of analog photography evolved when I chose to equip myself with a camera slightly more advanced than my father’s and to acquire the necessary equipment for developing my film rolls.

In reality, the intention begins to shift as soon as one decides to master the entire production chain: first through the quality of the capture tool, then through the rendering, by taking control of the post-photographic process.

From my point of view, there is something that does not change at all between analog and digital photography: for a photograph to fully belong to its author, they must be able to claim responsibility for each parameter chosen throughout the creative process.

When going through an external lab, decisions are de facto made by someone else, with development time and chemistry that may differ from what one would have chosen oneself. In digital photography, the same issue arises when a photographer uses a generic filter or preset to develop their images (I will expand on this point in a dedicated article, as it seems essential to me and yet is so rarely defended).

At that point in my career, when analog photography became more central, I was in a period where I was doing a lot of street photography; I therefore naturally began to reproduce my approach with this new tool.

The Rückenfigur is a subject that is dear to me. It is treated here in a similar approach to the one I could have taken in digital photography.

I did notice, however, that I did not take the same pleasure in it, and above all that I did not find meaning in replicating a digital approach in analog photography. I mainly had the impression of seeing images from a bygone century, which was never my intention.

I therefore understood that, although I did appreciate analog photography, I would assign it a different role than street photography.

Turning point

In my practice, the series Fragments emerged more or less during the Covid period. Its specificity lies in the use of my photographic archives as a primary source. It is therefore a rereading of existing works. Starting from images I considered absolutely failed, I zoomed into them to extract a tiny fragment that could potentially stand as a work in its own right. The main idea is to question the definitive and fixed nature of what is labeled as “bad”.

The side effect is that by zooming in, the pixels and small aesthetic imperfections of digital photographs become visible, which can give these works an almost analog appearance.

Increasingly drawn to the question of photographic materiality, I eventually found the place of analog photography within my work. I then quickly acquired equipment that allowed me to develop this approach.

Photograph taken in 2024

Maturity

Ultimately, it took me almost ten years to understand what I wanted to do with each of these tools. Digital finds its place in certain contexts, analog in others.

I do not develop the same approach with each medium, and I am particularly drawn to analog photography for its ability to work directly on the image support. It allows for a further step. The focus is no longer only on the visual, but also on the surface that receives it, through the accidents one chooses to accept or not, and the alterations one decides to introduce or not. The image becomes an object as much as a representation.

At least, this is the place I have chosen to give analog photography within my practice to date.