tryingConstraint is the Condition of Art
I'm usually not contemplative, especially not about art, but lately I've been considering art, and more specifically photography. I have fully ditched the smart phone and have only a dumbphone these days. It was a long time coming and was pushed into being when my already debloated and limited smartphone took a swim in the river during a canoe trip. Now, I like my setup, but my wife misses my ability to take photos. The dumbphone has a camera, but it's at a 2004 level quality, ie everything is a potato.
This got me considering what to do. I have enjoyed the last year of a simpler life, with focused tools, not jacks-of-all. We have a Nikon D3400, but it's big and bulky, and frankly I think running around with a camera in my pocket for the last almost 20 years has sort of left me numb to photos in general. I used to love photography, but a camera makes it instant and thoughtless, the result is that my love of composing and taking photos sort of waned to the point where I haven't taken a photo in years now.
Days of Yore
I'm somewhat on the edge of the film age. The film camera peaks in about 1999 and than was basically dead ten years later. Nonetheless, I do remember film cameras and photography. Those memories have a nostalgia-tinged glow to them, but I think there's more to it than that. When you took pictures with film every shot counted, you didn't take a burst of shots and than let the AI in your phone select the optimal picture to enhance. You had 24 to 36 shots to a roll and those all had a cost. At the end of the day you'd end up with physical prints and whether you did anything with them or not, they existed outside of cyberspace.
Not only that, but the medium of film did wonders to the image captured. Grain, light leaks, dust, and the unique colors of each film brand brought an immense amount of character and life to the photos. Modern filters can do the same thing, but it's shallow and fake, it's only a simulation of the real thing. I remember when someone in the family would get a batch of photos developed, we'd all sit around and look at them, everyone would get passed the photos and we got to relive those experiences together again. And than at holiday gatherings they'd come out again in big albums, so everyone who'd missed out could take part.
"Content" is art without constraints.
The dedicated cameras have all but died, replaced by phones. Cameras on phones are crazy good, they have amazing sensors and processors, with post-processing to rival any professional software available. But it's fast and disposable, 90% of the pictures will never be looked at again, the other 10% are edited and tweaked until "perfect", than shared on Instagram for a few dozen likes. Largely, the value of photos has died with the camera.
Forcing Constraint
Reflecting on all this, I've begun to form some ideas on how to proceed. I've acquired one of quintessential cameras, the Pentax K1000. It's a dead simple camera, doesn't need a battery, doesn't have a timer or even a DoF toggle. In 2025 it's an unneeded constraint that I hope will help revive the love of photography I once had. Film is almost impossible to find without the internet now, developing film is probably even harder. It takes days to weeks to get any results from the photos, and that's only after you've used up the roll. You're completely blind until you get the prints back. There's so many mistakes you can make, from overexposure, to unfocused shots. But for the first time in a very long time, I'm excited to take photos again. It feels difficult in the very best way.
Constraint is the Condition of Art
I think that the K1000 has taught me something about art in general. Constraints are the condition of art. Da Vinci preferred silverpoint because it was unforgiving in its precision. It's only with constraint that a poet composes a sonnet.
In abundance we're not finding creative freedom, but the death of creativity. Modern art is more often than not measured in likes, comments, and follows. And the lack of constraints and ease of use has resulted in a deluge of content that's there for one minute and replaced in the next. Content is instant, infinite, and disposable. It's trash journalism with retractions buried below the lede. It's CPM and click-through rates. It's algorithms and AI slop.
Art is slow, thoughtful, and purposeful. It's value isn't measured in impressions.