Bringing Vinyl Back, or the Art of Imperfection

My one heirloom sat in the living room of my childhood home – a hope chest (for my dowry!)(actual dowry Steve received from my mother: endless supply of worries about if his coat is warm enough for the weather) that has been passed down to the first woman in each generation in my family. When I was younger, it always looked like just another old thing in a house full of old things, and I was 13 before I discovered that it held much more exciting treasures – my mother’s old vinyl collection.

My mama and I opened the chest one rainy day, pulling out John Denver and Joni Mitchell and the Moody Blues, her waxing poetic about parties in her apartment in Boston, where they sat on pillows for lack of furniture and drank bottles of wine and played loud games of Pit and listened to record after record late into the night.

We kept some of the records out and many of my Saturday afternoon sleep-ins were interrupted by the first hisses of Ladies of the Canyon cranked all the way up. I’d stumble out and give my mom a bleary-eyed glare and she’d chirp Oh, is it too loud? Sorry about that, well now that you’re up….

I loved the depth and rawness of the music that came out of our speakers, the range of tone, but most of all I loved that it sounded so real, like actual people were singing and playing instruments – tiny gaffes and all. You can laugh, but as a child of the auto-tune generation, this was a revelation.

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All I want to do is shoot with old cameras. I’m obsessed. I triptumble around – head shoved down into patchworked black tubes, strangers peering discreetly, trying to figure out if I’m crazy…Is that some sort of metal detector? Why are you taking pictures of the ground?

Even photographers often don’t understand – there’s so much great technology out there, why would I tie my own hands by working with equipment that was last hot in 1950 and a method that is unwieldy at best and impossible at worst? Where everything is backwards, and I have to stand on a chair to get a straight on shot and where light leaks in and getting perfect exposure is a comedy of errors?

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This Christmas while back in the Midwest, I sat cross-legged at my hope chest again. My Mom hadn’t been through her records in years and each one made her gasp as she remembered where she got it, where she listened to it, who it reminded her of. We sat with piles strewn about the floor and she sighed and said, you don’t understand, this is my LIFE.

Steve and I boxed them up greedily.

At my in-laws, we sat in the basement, going through box after box. My father-in-law has been a collector for most of his life and we didn’t even make it through all of his boxes — it was too much for one trip — and he said, take whatever you want, take them all, I just want them listened to.

We found a map to his old girlfriend’s house drawn on the White Album.

Steve kept freaking out about the music – oh, THIS album, ohmygod, I cannot wait to listen to this. And I was excited too, but mostly I just could not get over the photographs on the album covers. This Mason Proffit album, in particular. This photo really struck me (I can’t find the back, but you’ll have to trust me, it makes it even more awesome) and man, if you put that photo on flickr now and asked for feedback, you would hear things looks like some of the faces are blacked out – maybe use a fill light next time? and this is really nice, but could use some sharpening and why is there so much noise, try running noiseware? The people who give this kind of feedback mean well – they’re telling you the things that are wrong with the photo and trying to make it better, trying to help you perfect your art.

And that’s what I was doing for so long, listening to that feedback (both internal and external), striving to take more perfect photographs – sharper, more saturated, composition lined up right along the grid of threes.

I did this despite all evidence that everything I truly love is deeply flawed.

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Our new turntable arrived yesterday. Our neighbor rescued it from the FedEx guy and hollered over our fence. She came over and I connected cords and we drank wine and there was a knock at the door from another neighbor who had wandered over after hearing rumors that we had records and then another and we finally got it all set up and put on the Moody Blues.

We sat around until late into the night, opening albums, discovering hilarious line notes and other treasures, listening to the pops and hisses of record after record.

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I’ve thought a lot over the last year about the kind of art that I love, the kind that I want to create, the kind I want to leave with the world. And here’s what I’ve realized – the art that speaks to me often does so through its flaws. I love the blurred faces and the hard grain and the faded coloring of that Mason Proffit photograph. They are technical imperfections, but they are also what make it interesting.

This is a rather difficult revelation to have in the age when HDR and hyper-saturation and unnatural sharpness and other means of perfecting nature are what a lot of people think make a photograph good.

But I’ve slowly stopped caring so much about how things will be perceived, stopped trying so hard to make my photographs perfect and focusing on making them more interesting, and started seeing their flaws as my stamp – proof that a human participated in the creation of this art, that this is what makes it mine.

And I’ve finally started making art that I’m proud of.