Learn what (analog) photography means for German artist and curator Jasmin Meinold.
How was your passion for photography kindled? Are you a professional photographer? What are your favorite photography subjects? What’s the reason for you to photograph analog and what do you like about our films?
I always loved taking pictures, especially analog ones with my Mom’s old Minolta XD7. It used to be part of every family holiday until it secretly became one of my belongings.
I am studying fine arts at HBK Braunschweig and am therefore engaging a lot in photo theory and sometimes, as a curator, also have to deal with other artists´ (photographic) works. I look at my own photography as a hobby and mostly think of it as a way to preserve memories.
What I like most about analog photography is the fact that you’re unable to compare the picture to the “reality” immediately after taking it. The week that it takes to let the film develop at the lab is a always an ordeal and helps me in learning to be patient. And the excitement when holding the pouch that contains the pictures! Should I take a look at them immediately or later? Often the pictures turned out totally different than I would have imagined them at the moment of taking them. Sometimes heads are partly cut off at the edge of the image, lines don’t align in the way I planned, but sometimes also surprising details or colours that I hadn’t anticipated become visible. I haven’t developed films myself for quite some time but always found it to be a magical process.
I can’t remember how I noticed your films, I guess through a friend of mine. The Volvox film was my first film and I’ll try out the Kolor film next. I like that the outcome can’t be foreseen and that it gives another layer of composition that can’t be influenced. As a photographer you have to found an alliance with the film in a certain way. It’s very self reflective when the chemical components of the photograph, the “making” of the picture itself is visible on the negative and the print. That’s quite interesting for me as a photography-theorist in training. 🙂
(The orignial text was in German. Translation by Hanna Pribitzer)
