there’s something intrinsically attractive about weathered, worn or distressed objects. i don’t think it would be such a popular apparel motif if people didn’t find some beauty in it. we see it on new graphic Ts that already have cracked printing, or new jeans that are already faded.
instagram, the wildly popular new iphone photo sharing app, has taken note of our love for imperfection, and is using it with great success. we even say things like “it has character” when referencing decaying or “weathered” objects.
it is my opinion that we are attracted to flawed and decayed objects because we are intrinsically attracted to stories, and traditionally, these flaws and decays are small clues to the stories of an object. i have a wonderfully worn side table type thing. i found it on the street, and inside i found some spools of thread. i wonder how this scuff got there, who made that scratch and how? did someone use it to store their sewing equipment? it has wheels. what someone rolling it around and bumped a corner and that’s how it became chipped? the decay is a very very tiny snippet of the story of that thing, and more importantly, the people who interacted with it. and that makes me VERY curious.
with that in mind, i think we can realize that while cracked Ts and faded jeans and instagram photos are very attractive, they’re not substantial. or stated as a simile, they’re like twinkies. they taste yummy, but in terms of substance are (mostly) bankrupt.
at this point allow me to make an aside. i use instagram and i think it’s cool. it makes some cool effects. and my “critique,” though it’s more just musing, is of the applied effects, and not of what people are taking pictures of. good photographic subject matter tells great stories, too.
allow me here to also make somewhat of a counterpoint to my own argument, using the example of marco suarez and his work. while the textures and “decay,” if you will, of his work are digital applications of textures that may or may not have been manually produced, he applies them in a way, that is thoughtful, intentional and artful, as generally opposed to a sweeping application of a pre-fab filter, al a instagram (though i suppose that is why it is named instagram after all).
anyway, it is the basic idea of the story-telling scars of the side table that drives me to produce items using the linocut printing process. in the finished product, it is the unintentional marginal stripes that speak of my carving of the block. it is the texture of the ink on the page that speak of how the press pushed the page against the block to transfer the ink. and i use images of soulfully decayed brooklyn architecture and aged photos from the 40s of my grandparents so that i may achieve more substantive story telling.
in conclusion, i want to reinforce that i do not believe instagram-type application to be evil. like i said, i use it myself. i just want to encourage you to consider the stories of the people and things around you, and intentionally allow that to inform your work, consciously.