Vintage Is Best

Fake Photographs – Vintage Is Best

There’s a quiet rebellion in the grain of a 35mm photograph. A resistance to the algorithmic gloss, to the curated nostalgia of digital filters that mimic what they never lived. The image above—taken with a Pentax K1000 in July 2012—captures Woolacombe Bay not as a simulation, but as a moment etched in emulsion. It’s not trying to be vintage. It is vintage.

Since Instagram’s launch in 2010, we’ve seen a tidal wave of retro-styled digital images—square crops, faded tones, faux film borders. These filters offer a kind of aesthetic shorthand for authenticity, a way to signal emotional depth without the mess of real light, real time, or real imperfection. But the question lingers: can digital ever truly replicate the soul of analogue?

The Edge of the Real

35mm photography carries with it a physicality that digital cannot fake. Each frame is a commitment. Each roll of film a finite resource. There’s no infinite scroll, no instant delete. The photographer must wait, must trust, must relinquish control to the chemical dance of light and silver halide.

This process births images with depth—not just in resolution, but in resonance. The grain isn’t noise; it’s texture. The colour shifts aren’t errors; they’re character. Even the flaws—light leaks, dust, scratches—become part of the story. AI can simulate these effects, but it cannot embody them. It cannot feel the weight of the camera, the tension of the shutter, the anticipation of development.

Filters vs. Film: Aesthetic or Artifact?

Digital filters are designed to evoke emotion, but they often do so by referencing the very medium they replace. The square format of Instagram nods to Polaroid and Kodak Instamatic. Sepia tones whisper of aged prints. But these are simulations—stylized echoes of a tactile past.

AI-enhanced photography takes this further, generating images that never existed, enhancing faces that never aged, perfecting scenes that were never flawed. It’s impressive. It’s seductive. But it’s also synthetic.

35mm photography, by contrast, is an artifact. It ages. It fades. It carries the fingerprints of its maker and the dust of its journey. It’s not just a look—it’s a life.

Why Vintage Still Matters

In an era of infinite images, the scarcity of film becomes a virtue. It forces intention. It invites patience. It demands presence. And in doing so, it offers something digital rarely does: a sense of truth.

Not truth in the factual sense—photographs have always been subjective—but truth in the experiential sense. A 35mm image is a trace of a real moment, captured through a real lens, onto a real surface. It’s not a filter applied after the fact. It’s the fact itself.