“Archaeological Photography, the Uncanny Valley, and Lomography” by Colleen Morgan touches on the way documentary images of archaeological sites use particular photographic techniques to produce an uncanny effect (whether consciously or not). I hadn’t heard of “lomography” before, which Morgan describes:
“lomography…employs low-quality toy cameras for an intentionally “bad” photograph that is blurry, off-color with light leaks. These photos are more atmospheric but obviously not as accurate. They contribute to an aesthetic of decay that compliments the subject. HDR is too precious to me, too bejewelled and fantastic. Lomography represents a more “accurate” view of the past in that it is hazy, hard to discern, never quite all there”
I’m reminded of horrorshow gimmicks, of course. But looking at the images on this site got me thinking about the way that these photographs not only represent an eerie scene, but how the camera lense substitutes for the healthy eye of the viewer; our very perception is “decayed”…ergo the specter of death is felt as interior, subjective, and what the ph0tograph captures is not a haunted space, but a space which we inhabit and haunt, if only for the the momentary duration of the initial affect of uncanny. (The HDR photographs, too, could be said to similarly introject the subjectivity of the cyborg).
Related, but different: lomography is a nostalgia fetish for toy and archaic/outmoded cameras and film technology of the past. Lomography.com reveals this fascination with toy cameras in all its glory.
In the digital and mobile millennium, we are seeing a shift in the ground of the uncanny, away from the home to the experience of being in the world through its representations of time and place. Analog has become the Other.
