Photographer, DJ and cult hero Aidan Kelly remembers a time before Insta-gratification.
I've been noticing for at least a year or even more there has been a steady incline of neck creaking, bending and pinch-zooming as thousands of way-too-early Dublin commuters - on bikes sometimes - Instagrammers with those phone covers from the Pokémon factory in City West and blogging obsessives with their ability to turn any kind of infraction - You spelled my name wrong on the side of my latte! - into a newsworthy piece, rant, demonstration (much like this one) of opinion or whelp, all using their phone's camera as a torch to be seen in the distance.
“I have something to say, I’m not feeling myself!” These no-filter using creatives are staring at their phone screens at perfect 45 degree stances, clearly obstructing the right of way of coffee-less commuters or tired homecomers who couldn’t care less, shooting at every possible angle a chemtrail, an odd cloud formation, trees, bridges, those heartbreaking Poolbeg twins that need a desperate lick of paint and then the ultimate orgasm, the one thing that keeps us all cheerful beyond belief.
The Sunset.
When you think about it (and some of us won’t be able to because you never did this) but on a regular basis back at a time when the words 'digital' and 'camera' just didn’t happen as a conversation on the buzzing back alleys of Cabra West etc. nobody had a clue about the impending revolution in communication that was to change our very existence. Maybe the boys in NASA were having secret chats with IBM's finest, but we weren’t hearing any of it - it was still remote-less push button Fergusons or Grundigs with Black Forest Gateaux, Jam sandwiches and VHS tapes in Dublin 7. Wind-on 35mm and dirty lenses.
It hadn’t dawned on us yet what the future would hold, no indication only 24 or 36 rolls of woegeous Fujifilm and PRINTING for gods sake. Like PRINTING so that we would have something to talk about of the long-forgotten memory of a night out last Saturday, up till all hours but yet what survived was a disposable that needed a chemist. Speaking of chemists! The day I first thought I needed condoms for an impending revelry (I didn't) was also the same day that I bought my first roll of film, Completely frozen, I didn’t have the nerve to ask for the 'johnnies' so I got the unexposed negatives instead. Simpler times.
I was reading somewhere online - of course! - that in the year of 2012 more photos were taken and recorded online than had been processed in the last 40 years. Which ones will we remember or cringe at?
Those times are incredibly memorable, as those were the Saturdays and Sundays that had the best sunsets, working class sunsets, sunshine after Croke Park or Dalymount when Bob Marley played and my Dad only had a sea rod for fishing on the canal, that was hilarious, no digital camera then! But the memory is so vivid. We caught a Perch. With bread. There were always cameras in the family. Names like Yashica, Minolta, Pentax, original box brownies my grandmother wore on her shoulder, her husband developed films, my mam answering the door to those who couldn’t afford the chemist, my uncle Tony stored his negatives in recycled ice cream tubs from Wynnes hotel, the attic was in Ballyfermot.
Sometimes nothing changes. We’ve always remembered. There has always been paper, well, in our time, we took notes, we wrote to each other - in pencil! There were always walls for our names and especially then in my family, there were always cameras to catch the family off guard, communion or conformation, Donkeys on beaches, under 12 football finals we lost... we didn’t know how to pose back then, we didn’t understand what would become. We thought everything would disappear and it kind of did, we put those prints into suitcases and then under stairs in the old house, rarely seeing that famous sun.
Now the storage is in a different kind of cloud, something far away, almost forever (unless Trump says we need to delete everything), we’ve run out of cloud.
That wouldn’t work. So why not? Photograph everything because it may not last - certainly the case when my friend Greg Smith shot every remaining rope tied to a lamppost in working class areas and called the project Playstation, or Gary Coyle’s daily shot in the 40 Foot is an ongoing astonishing memory.
It’s only a sunset! It’s only physics, a dream come through when the red and orange take over from the blues. Yes, it’s that inspiring sunset that distracts us for the minute it takes to snap the shot, anything but the traffic, the tattoos... what are those photographs of people’s legs on beaches? The noise, the homeless or the politics or the loneliness and mild depression, will I be remembered, am I relevant, it’ll be fine as long as we don’t get hit by the climate changing, we’ve suffered years of rain and why not, we’re doing okay again so enjoy it whilst it’s there?
I was reading somewhere online - of course! - that in the year of 2012 more photos were taken and recorded online than had been processed in the last 40 years. Which ones will we remember or cringe at? Does it matter as long as we have them, hold onto them and then don’t drop the hard drive or hide them under the stairs and never print them? Photographs are time travel, reminders, but it’s an illusion of light and timing, you think you have it but it might be gone, unless you have all them times you thought were lost backed up on that cloud.
Aidan Kelly has no pictures of sunsets on his Instagram page. Photos by the kings of sunsets @picturethisdublin
