Roger W. Hicks

Rubber chickens . Chocolate visiting cards. A camera support that looks (and performs) like a big, sticky limpet. Every bit as much as cameras, films, and imaging software, this weird and wonderful stuff is what the Photo Marketing Association show is about.

We are talking, after all, about marketing. It is literally their middle name.

There are plenty of reasons to eschew perfect sharpness. A classic application was to suppress lines and wrinkles, or just for a light, airy mood: as Tallulah Bankhead once said, “They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.” Another reason is to create the sense of something half-remembered, imperfectly limned in the picture as in...

What is the appeal of "retro" photography? I mean, surely, hasn't everyone "gone digital" nowadays? And equally surely, wouldn't you admit that the three new ZV Classic lenses from Zeiss, for traditional Hasselblads, are as retro as they come?
The answer is no, on both counts.

First, film has no more been killed by digital than...