In a moment where technology desires to exponentially double and triple its rate of occupancy in our fevered minds with its unlimited growth prospect, followed by its unmitigated potential to cause alarm instead of vague dreams of progress, from the militarism of our economies to the pursuit of transhuman desires of biological co-habitation to furthermore nefarious possibilities of neuro-digital interfacing, one can imagine the appeal of stepping back from the future that has incessantly demanded our attention toward a time when technologies burgeoning capability seemed more like an asset than something to be ever-keenly suspicious of.

Where the exact point between our worry began and the dreams of progressive technology faded is very hard to place, but I would suggest that many of us have lived through some of it. Those of us old enough to look back at the run-up to Y2K (the implausible end of everything because of limited processors and date resetting) wonder how there could have possibly been so much ostentatious clamor regarding the moment, which was upended without so much as a whimper by the continuation of things as ever. For me, I hold the movie Maximum Overdrive, a film based on a short story by Steven King in which all forms of machines, plugged in or not, become sentient and embark on a murderous spree seeking to eliminate all human life on the planet. For others, it began with Phillip K. Dick, perhaps. It is hard to say, but there is a worn fetishism in thinking about technology, its promise of the future, and the possibility of that future being denied that works its way into the fold of our subconscious desires.

In the case of Petra Stavast, I very much doubt that the Dutch artist began her book S75 thinking about these things. At a certain point, a clear choice was enlisted to continually use an early camera phone from 2005, a  technological stone age (by today’s comparison) personal device/tool with a maximum resolution of 1280×960 pixels, when other more accurate camera phones became available. This usage could result in a broader discussion about optics or nostalgia as Stavast began adapting to personal camera phones through the Siemns S75. And yet, at the heart of it, I believe that the decision to look backward and retrieve and continue making images from this low-res camera phone has more implications and asks us about our fears and hopes not only on the grounds of retro-futurism but may also be seen as a kind of stock take of our contemporary world where AI and computational imagery is very much where the discussion of where our images are heading. It is not only that the artist used the camera phone in the early 2020s, but rather that it has been a tool she has used over time, eliciting a further conversation about compatibility and human preference for technical devices and their ability to interface with our creative process.

In their low-res format, the photographs from Stavast’s phone are imperfect and grainy, and a melancholic dip is imbued in their scratchy surface. No doubt, this stems from a low-lit environment in which many of the photographs were shot. This allows the photograph to clip and show digital artifacts like noise that enhance each frame’s morose beauty. Blowing up or cropping each frame could also allow some painterly digi-pictorialism to develop. It is hard to say precisely how the artist pushed the images to their digital ends. Either way, it is purposeful, as the photographs stretch, distend, and dissolve.

In some ways, S75 feels like a strange catalog of 21st-century human typology, though it avoids making a list of Noah’s Ark types to bring along. That kind of work leads to other darker ideas about classification. Instead, the book is complete with photographs closer to the work of August Sander, whose images were made in exciting and similarly nebulous times, making his work prescient, fitting, and historically invaluable. Though we assume little information about Stavast’s sitters, one can see the work has a kinship to Sander as the work by Stavast has been completed almost 100 years between the two artists, both artists seemingly making images on the precipice of the potential for significant societal shifts to occur. Both artists are European and have launched their projects at a time when technology seems to both help and, conversely, stifle society. Things arise to question how we pursue progress while dealing with anxious outcomes. Our times are in flux, and why should our artistry not reflect this?

Again, it is essential to understand that Stavast may have been playing with anachronistic technological tendencies in the work and that perhaps it was merely an exercise in examining nearly two decades of technical history through the bulwark of using a retrograde tool such as the S75. The project was made over these two decades, suggesting a comfort with the tool. It is not simply using retro-digi-aesthetics to create nostalgia. That the artist chose to work with the phone for so long, undoubtedly doing so without access to updates or as a tool of particular convenience, is fascinating. As with all great books or works of art, I believe the implications are broader. As an audience, we might find valuable ways to channel the work into more significant discussions about our moment in time and the reflective mirror it holds up, challenging our perception of the near past, the present, and what the future may hold.

Petra Stavast

S75

Roma