Feaverish Photography Blog

Photo by Tate Foley

Today’s interview is with Athens, Georgia’s Tate Foley.

Aaron: You say in you Flickr profile that you’re on a mission to use and catalog every film camera ever made. What’s the motivation behind that?

Tate: The main motivation for cataloging these cameras is first and foremost a love of analog photography. I love getting a new camera, understanding how it works, taking a roll of film through it, and comparing the results to other cameras that I have shot through. It seems very scientific, and in a sense is that. Although, through this science of collecting and cataloging cameras, I found one day that I’ve created an extremely comprehensive visual diary of my life over the past few years, which is a really nice object to possess.

Photo by Tate Foley

Photo by Tate Foley

Aaron: You’re maybe best known for your series Evolution is Convenient. How did that get started? And what does the name mean? Also, how important was the camera to the process? Do you think you would have done it in a more manual way with a more traditional camera?

Tate: The Evolution is Convenient series really did get started with a handful of Spectra photos that I used as sketches for the project. Using a split filter for the Spectra camera, I was able to take two exposures on one picture, allowing me to experiment with this combination.

Photo by Tate Foley

Tate [cont.]: When I discovered there was a Polaroid camera that had two lenses, and a wider format, I was sold. I bought the camera specifically for the project, but realized quickly that it has an extremely sharp lens at the correct distance, and is a nice way to satisfy my love for diptychs in a moment. If there were no Miniportrait camera, I would have probably continued to try and perfect the idea with my Spectra. If neither of these cameras had existed, I think I would have tried to block out a 35mm SLR or an equivalent. The idea sparked before the photo series, it came out in some print work I had investigated earlier. The name for the series speaks to the question of evolution, and where continued evolution could take the living bodies of this world. Maybe through continued centuries of analog photography research, my offspring will be born with cameras for heads.

Photo by Tate Foley

Photo by Tate Foley

Aaron: You say your film pictures are meant to be viewed in one single way, exactly as they come out of the camera. Even your peel-apart Polaroid film is scanned with the developer detritus still attached, dried goo and all. Can you talk about that?

Tate: I believe, and can only guess, that when the mighty god Edwin created something that no man has or ever will create again, there was not a way for mass quantities of people to view these objects. Yes they could be and were reproduced, but never traveled as far as communication travels now. I think that Polaroid always had in mind the idea of something to hold, immediately, an art object unmatched.

Photo by Tate Foley

Tate [cont.]: When I upload these pictures, I am constantly thinking about how I viewed the photographs and wanting my audience to have as close to the same experience as possible, just shy of holding the photo in their own hands. I also believe that keeping the photos as close to the original as possible allows for less error in this scientific cataloging – if someone wants to know what kind of film and camera takes what kinds of pictures, hopefully they can easily find that information.

Photo by Tate Foley

Photo by Tate Foley

Aaron: I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re probably excited about the recent news of Polaroid film coming back. What’s the appeal of Polaroid film, for you?

Tate: Haha, you would be totally right to assume I was a bit giddy. As my wife could also verify, I stayed in bed the entire week after the February 2008 announcement. Our revolution of analog photography had been dealt a vital blow. I was under the impression that our kids could enjoy Polaroid photography like we did, and I was terribly wrong. Polaroid, for me, was the pinnacle of analog. The tonal qualities of the photos, their feel in your hands, the complete anomaly that these photos were was nothing short of a miracle. But then! A beam of light in the darkness! I am very excited at the announcement, and want to give Polaroid a loving I-told-you-so slap on the back of the head.

Photo by Tate Foley

Aaron: Let’s talk about your Interphotographer Camera Loan program. How’d that get started and how successful has it been?

Tate: I think it got started one day when I realized I had no money and no space to store any more cameras, but didn’t want to stop this process of cataloging. I thought that the easiest way for me to continue this was to ask people if I could shoot through their cameras, providing that they loan me the camera to use for 30 days, and then I ship them back the camera and every photo that I took with it. The only cost to the owner was the shipping one way, and they get a whole stack of photos taken by me. It has acquired moderate popularity since it started, and I hope it continues to gain momentum, and someday be a source where photographers can search a list of cameras and see how they work and what type of photos they take.

Photo by Tate Foley

Aaron: I suppose it’d be a crime to interview a camera collector and not ask him what his favorite all-time camera is.

Tate: The difficulty of this question could only be rivaled with “What is your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?” It’s such a hard question that I’ve been asked a lot, so I’m going to copout and use a series of somewhat confusing and extremely digressive lists to solve/help you forget this question:

My three favorite Polaroid cameras:
1 – Polaroid SX70
2 – Polaroid 250
3 – Polaroid Colorpack IV

My three favorite cameras based on physical beauty (people asking what’s around my neck):
1 – Minolta Hi-Matic 7s
2 – Belomo Vilia Auto Triplet
3 – Argus C3 Matchmatic

My three favorite cameras based on ability to deceive (it looks like the crappiest camera in the world to the outsider, but I know it actually takes the best pictures ever):
1 – Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim
2 – Kodak Star 110
3 – Lomo Smena 8M

My three favorite cameras based on physical properties that have made me nickname them:
1 – Minolta XG7/Polaroid Spirit600 hybrid – “The Tank”
2 – Agfa D-6 Cadet/Polaroid pack film hybrid – “Agfaroid”
3 – Olympus XA2 – “The Panther’s Egg”

Tate [cont.]: And there you have it. Take from those lists what you wish. My favorite camera right now is my Graflex Anniversary 4x5 Speed Graphic. I just got done fixing it up, and have yet to understand its power. It is a beautiful, but very elusive little monster.

Photo by Tate Foley

There are way more great photos on Tate’s Flickr page, and don’t forget to check out his Interphotographer Camera Loan program.