35mm · Analog · Fuel Motorcycles · Low-fi · Photography · Sidewaze jacket · Feb 26, 2021

Is Analog Back?

Vinyl records, analog film cameras, print magazines, and paper notebooks were once written off as dead, but now their sales are surging. Although we live in a digital age, we put increasingly more value on physical experiences. The resurgence of analog is not necessarily only a nostalgia for the past but perhaps also a driving force for a post-digital era and a new future. We are adopting analog because it gives us something that digital just can’t provide us. Some of us are rediscovering it, while younger generations are embracing it for the first time.

Returning to analog comes from a combination of productivity and purpose, and the more romantic. Sometimes we feel that it simply performs better, and other times we are drawn to the analog because of a physical experience; it gives us something tangible. A combination of head and heart.

Human beings are fundamentally analog creatures. We are made of flesh and blood and walking on a spinning rock. As long as this remains the case, we will always interact in a more profound and meaningful way with the analog world. We derive more pleasure from the world outside of our screens because it is three-dimensional and tangible. The tangibility of a physical object indulges our senses. Touch is one of the most important ways to experience the world we live in. It is the way we first communicate with the world when we are children. Digitalization has deprived us of these sensations.

The creative possibilities - and constraints - of analog, low-fi photography appeals to many photographers. One of them is Ignition Rojas, who joined the Fuel team during the photoshoot for our Sidewaze jacket, and created a series of images with old Russian and Chinese medium format and 35mm cameras. The result is a suggestive, hypnotic series with a great artistic component.

Film: Kodak Ektachrome E100 developed cross process

Photography: @ignitionrojas