Analog Decay is a series of images derived primarily from accidentally and intentionally damaged film. The bulk of images here are color transparency film. The inspiration came from finding the occasional damaged and scratched negative on the street, usually someone’s lost or discarded family photos. Using that as a starting point, I began work with my own discarded images, allowing them to become irreversibly damaged through a variety of techniques. The process is largely unpredictable, often resulting in an image with an entirely new meaning.
The Analog Decay series addresses how everything ages and changes over time, even so-called archival and permanent items. It challenges our concepts of the longevity of photographic art and the materials used to create it. The images evoke comparisons between analog and digital, the perception of quality, keeping alive questions like: ‘which is better – analog or digital – and does it matter anymore?’. As a final ironic twist, the series is digitally printed, from high-resolution digital scans.
The images in this series are printed in editions of 10 to 25.
David McGlynn 