The explanation begins, precisely, with the phone. The cameras of today’s smartphones are too good for much of what we ask of them. HDR, noise reduction, night mode, scene recognition, automatic merging of multiple exposures, computational retouching… We press and the software decides. But after thousands of flawless photographs, that perfection becomes boring.
The compact camera introduces small details. You have to carry it with you, switch it on, wait, decide when to use the flash, and then transfer the images. Some older cameras even take a moment to save each photograph. Against the logic of producing, editing and posting in a matter of seconds, that clumsiness is appealing.
There is also an aesthetic issue. The front flash, blown-out highlights, digital noise, somewhat odd tones, and the reduced ability to resolve difficult scenes have ceased to be considered necessarily defects. The photography from the early 2000s (the era of parties photographed on sites like Tillate.com, the first social networks, Facebook albums and the silver compact cameras) has become a visual reference for a generation that was too young to use those cameras when they appeared.
And holidays have a lot to say here. Taking out the phone to photograph a cove also means coming up against WhatsApp, Instagram, email and three notifications we hadn’t asked for. A camera does one thing. And what more could you want?
