I took all but one of the square images in the grid below with a Fuji Instax SQ10 on the streets of Rio over a month ago. The camera was lent to me by Fuji’s central Ohio representative when I purchased a new digital camera. He told me they were curious to see what I would shoot with the little hybrid Instant/Digital camera while I was in South America. He included four packs of instant film, and I gave prints away to the people depicted below. This blogpost is not a product review, but you can find an honest one here. I didn’t feel the camera operations were intuitive. It offered very little exposure and focus control, but once I got used to what it could do, I decided to use those limitations as creative challenges. These feel a little like Instamatic photos, but with the option of later adding filters and vignettes.
For years I’ve been collaborating with other creative people (many of whom identify as queer) to create portraits. While I was still in Brazil, I solicited participation in an ongoing (if sparsely populated) project via an online dating app called, Scruff. I wanted to meet new people and shoot collaborative portraits. The app, and others like it — Bumble, Grindr, Hornet, Tinder — uses gps to display a grid of profile images. The person who is closest to your location is shown first, and the profiles are arranged in order from nearest to farthest. Pictures are uploaded by individual users to best advertise themselves and what they are looking for, along with standard textual information that is revealed by clicking on a profile pic. The images work a bit like a menu, signaling desire and working to entice clicks. Some people show their faces but there are many anonymous chests, washboard abs, and headless torsos. A friend saw my profile and offered a correction to the tortured syntax of my Portuguese headline, “I want to collaborate with you to make an image of you.”
“We say, ‘I want to take your picture’,” my friend suggested in a direct message.
“We say that too,” I countered, “but I don’t want to take anything. I can’t come here from the USA and go around like an imperialist taking things. I want to work side-by-side with them to make a photograph.”
”OK.,” he replied, “but do you think Scruff is the right place for post-colonial dialogue? Guys are just trying to get laid.”
Left: a grid of potential matches on Scruff, listed in order from nearest to farthest. Center: my current profile Right: a more typical profile
Fair point. It’s how I met my partner. A long-term, long-distance relationship was not something we were looking for when we clicked on each other’s profiles over six years ago, and yet here we are. While I have made some long-lasting connections online, using the apps often left me with the disconcerting feeling that I was packaging and marketing myself as an object to be consumed. Apps, indeed all social media, give me the feeling that one’s self-worth might be buoyed (or sunk) by how many likes one receives. On platforms like Instagram and Twitter, the most savvy users have always carefully curated their online personae and personal brands, recognizing the power of apps to launch their careers. I’m working toward that too via my website and social media, but I also feel that this kind of packaging is reductive. What do we lose of ourselves and our potential to connect with each other when intimacy is transactional? What can we gain by acknowledging the exchange?
Part of what makes instant prints special is that we can hold them in our hands. In an era when photography — like so many things — is seen mostly on screens, the seductive lure of the photographic object is more powerful than ever.
When chatting with Scruff users who want to know more about my project, I ask them, “How would you like to be seen?” So far, only one person has seriously engaged with that question (thanks, Pablo) and his portrait is at the top of the post. The last Fuji Instax square portrait in the grid above resulted from a response to my Scruff profile in Brazil, but Cyro and I were unable to follow through to complete our collaborative photoshoot before the pandemic struck. The rest of the images were shot at the end of February in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. I did, in fact, ask people if I could “take their picture,” and I gave them a photo on the spot. Even though the low-resolution images were noisy, blurry, and the highlights were blown out, people were happily surprised to receive the instant 4-inch prints. The real equalizer, ironically, was to offer something tangible in return for their likenesses. I have yet to understand where this leaves me. Do apps make us commodify ourselves? In late stage capitalism, are we more or less forced to package and market ourselves to each other not just for work but also for pleasure, companionship, and fellowship? Is that all bad? I don’t think the answers to these questions are as simple as yes or no, and I’m not even sure where I stand. Woof.