You see them everywhere.

Execrable, blurred, out-of-focus pictures, often with the frame borders printed to make sure you know which film stock was used, generally with a scratch or two added for effect. Always in black and white. No, I don’t mean 99% of digital pictures. Those, at least, are generally in focus and certainly not scratched, with no film border in sight.

Somewhere or other in the description you will find two telling words.

One will be ‘Holga’. The other will be ‘Artist’.

What is going on here is that someone with more sales skill than talent – latter day Picassos – has grasped that pictures which look old, have lousy definition, worse composition and really should never have been taken, can fool the gullible when the Artist discloses he has used a plastic throw away camera with a Coke bottle-bottom lens. In other words, a Holga. Other variants include Lomo (sorry, Lomography) and Diana. Mercifully, no one has yet besmirched any fine memories by using a Kodak Brownie. Pictures from the latter would, at least, be sharp.

The text goes something like this:

“The Artist prefers to use a Holga camera in a return to basics, a reminder of a time when photography was a purer medium. The Artist eschews the pretense of color in pursuit of the essentials of light and shade, working solely in black and white, developed in nineteenth century Pyro chemicals found in his grandfather’s attic and fixed in the Artist’s own urine. The sincerity and clarity of the Artist’s vision is displayed in all its glory in these magnificent prints which bear no embellishment, allowing the Artist’s soul to shine through.”

And, dear reader, I have a Bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Update 11/20/2015:

It took over a decade but this piece of utter garbage has finally been discontinued. You can read the joyous news here. Good riddance.