I set up as a fashion photographer in the early 2000s, while the multimedia industry was in full mutation. It is in this fierce pixels race, this race for productivity - the « all digital » trend - that I prepared for the move towards digital technology by favoring film photography.
Looking back on a strategic artistic choice :
Digital sensors technology got off to a slow start on the French market, with constraints affecting their use hardly acceptable by industry professionals at the time.
The performances of DSLR cameras quickly evolved, in a significant way. They offered the convenience that we’re all familiar with today, such as wireless data transfer and tiny memory cards with impressive storage capacity. The touch screen user interface allows a more authentic experience, comparable to instant prints like Polaroids, color or black and white Ektas (Scala 200x).
But a polaroid photograph involves way more than a control screen and a zoom function. In my view, this is a visceral memento; at once a testimony, a fantasy and a mistery.
Film photography offers a natural and pure dimension that digital photography has yet to achieve.
Some Industry professionals, photographers and/or filmmakers, agree on the inherent advantages of film technology, be it depth, definition or authentic restitution of our perception.
Moreover, film photography means working in the real world, with no room for error: no pixels, no unlimited shooting here…The image must be perfectly thought through, or else the models will have to pose again, and the shot is repeated until the picture unveiled by the Polaroid reaches the desired quality level. Film photography does not lie, it is concrete. Great precision is expected to produce error-free work. This very precision in the practice of film photography led me to become extremly demanding when working in the digital domains and in my other endeavors.