The Design Observer Twenty

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01.26.14

John Foster | Accidental Mysteries

Imperfect Beauty

For years, and more recently with Vogue magazine, there has been considerable controversy about high fashion magazines and their need to “perfect” the models who appear within the magazines and especially on their covers. This desire for perfection in photography is certainly not new to fashion or photography, but the fashion industry goes to extremes in changing body styles to what they think we want to see.

With that in mind, this week I have selected 26 photographic images with either deliberate or accidental flaws. Marks, scratches, poor processing, decay, age deterioration, repairs, cracks, tears, rips, and more. Here's to the beauty of imperfect images, and to the beauty to be found in imperfection.

Click on any image to find the source.

Total eclipse of moon on cracked glass plate

Photo by Miroslav Tichý

Mirror-reversed daguerreotype of the moon, attributed to John W. Draper, believed to have been taken March 26, 1840 from his rooftop observatory at New York University.

Torn and Marked Photograph of Hands

Pieced together photograph of young man

Repaired photograph

Retouched press photo

Badly deteriorated photo of 19th century gentleman

Artist unknown, possibly intentional manipulation of old photograph

Marked on photograph

Natural deterioration of photograph

Glass plate photograph of painting in extreme decay
Collection of John Foster

Nicely torn image of woman

Decayed or damaged negative from The Turconi Collection

Collection of John Foster

Haphazardly cut photo for publication

Effect of the heat!

Deteriorated photograph

Oddly deteriorated emulsion

Deteriorated glass plate of Missouri bridge
Collection of John Foster

Deteriorated glass plate of Missouri riverboat
Collection of John Foster

Posted in: Accidental Mysteries, Arts + Culture, Photography

Comments [2]

As they say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

A visual feast, thanks!

Rusty Dylan
01.27.14
02:29

Mostly this is correct as far as fashion photography has been concerned. However many photographers have gone against this grain, including the grungy, carelessly developed Polaroid 665 & 55 fashion work of Sarah Moon (one example: http://www.pbase.com/belyaevsky/image/92356549).

In the work shown here I don't see the glass plate work of Sally Mann or the many photographers using lowfi cameras such as the original Diana 151 camera and the Holga - as well as mention of the revival of processes such as ambrotype, tin type, pinhole, direct positive and wet plate collodion.

One such photographer of note, Mark Silk, moved from shooting with a Diana in the 70s and 80s to wet plate in the 2000s. Social media sites such as Flickr will show an abundance of trained and untrained photographers shooting specifically for the distressed look as depicted in the images in this article.

Of course the concept of imperfect beauty is derivative of the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic.

gregorj
01.30.14
08:54

John Foster and his wife, Teenuh, have been longtime collectors of self-taught art and vernacular photography. Their collection of anonymous, found snapshots has toured the country for five years and has been featured in Harper’s, Newsweek Online and others.

Jobs | June 05