“90’s Art School,” A Crowdsourced Time Machine, Is Reviving Serendipity, Simplicity, & Friendships
Michael O’Donnell / Editor of WNW Magazine
“There were no digital cameras to speak of in the mid-nineties,” Matthew Atkatz tells me, setting the scene, “but it was the apex of analog photography technology. It wasn't like everybody carried a camera around their neck though. They were relegated to certain people, like professional photographers, photojournalists… and art students.”
At art schools in the nineties, disposable cameras were brought out to parties and passed around. There was a love of polaroids, which by then were already antique. “We were raiding the Salvation Army and buying SX-70 Land Cameras (now collectibles), but we were getting them for $15. In the seventies and eighties, with Warhol and Basquiat, there was so much party photography happening. I think we were probably inspired by that—just documenting life.”
This unique set of conditions, ripe for experimentation back then, has yielded a new experimental project from Atkatz called “90s Art School,” which plucks these bygone photos from old shoeboxes and gives them a digital yet unpretentious revival.
“It was the apex of analog photography technology. It wasn’t like everybody carried a camera around their neck though. They were relegated to certain people, like professional photographers, photojournalists… and art students.”
During the pandemic, Atkatz unearthed photos from his college days at RISD and shared his rediscovery with some college friends. They reminisced about the good old days, talked about whether anyone would find them interesting, and joked about the daunting task of getting everybody or anybody to scan images. Akatz decided to forge ahead and created the account on Instagram. By the ninth post, his inbox started blowing up.
There’s no editorializing and there’s no aggrandizing, an approach revealed in Atkatz’s archival curation. “I'm interested in serendipity and I'm tired of irony. I like simple things and I like photos that have a familiarity to them. As far as the quality of them, they're unselfconscious.”
Atkatz elaborates, “Everybody's just living life. There are a ton of accidents and mistakes and double exposures, plenty not in focus. I love the directness of what the photos are. If you compare those images against social media today, you instantly see the difference in the way we pose in photos.”
“I’m interested in serendipity and I’m tired of irony. I like simple things and I like photos that have a familiarity to them. As far as the quality of them, they’re unselfconscious.”
Now, we all can’t help but think about the lifespan of photos. Scrolling through the 90s Art School feed is a reminder that 25-30 years ago, there was a completely different, carefree approach (or no approach at all) to posing for a photo. There’s also a palpable intimacy between whoever's taking the photo and the person who’s perfectly at ease being photographed. In this collection of imagery, you can sense a close-knit community, which was a big part of the experience of being in art school in the nineties. 90s Art School is providing in Atkatz’s words a “25-year time machine” that allows people to see themselves in scenes they forgot they were in, and rediscover that sense of community.
“What brings me the most pleasure is how much this project has done to reconnect people that haven't spoken in a long time. I've had so many interesting conversations with people who I haven't spoken to in years, decades, and in some instances since graduation. You realize that even though twenty years have gone by, you still connect and have so much in common. There’s such an outpouring of gratitude around people reconnecting. It's one of the most serendipitous and joyful parts of the project.”
Atkatz’s artistic eye is rendered in his own images as well as his curation of what makes the cut. “I'm making some deliberate decisions to leave out things like graduations and organized college events. To me, the interesting piece is the in-between stuff, the things that happen in-between classes and graduation. And I think that's what has the vibe of the era, that less formal stuff.”
Atkatz intentionally avoids driving the conversation. The captions are “deliberately ambiguous,” just the first names of whoever is in the photo. Even if he wanted to include more, it’d simply be too much heavy lifting, since analog photography obviously lacks any metadata. Without metadata, he’s relying on the submitters. And sometimes the commenters.
In one particular photo on the feed, someone leaves quite a memorable comment: “Far left and mid-left are my parents! My dad shaved his hair off that night!” As you scroll through the feed, you’ll undoubtedly want to know the story behind certain photos. Atkatz plans to soon address the narrative possibilities on Instagram stories with #90words, where submitters can share a 90-word-or-less story behind the image.
“I’ve had so many interesting conversations with people who I haven’t spoken to in years, decades, and in some instances since graduation. There’s such an outpouring of gratitude around people reconnecting.”
There’s flexibility to how this project is experienced. Even if you weren't there, the images are interesting because they're a quarter of a century old. And then there’s the resurgence of the 90s zeitgeist. “If you look at what's happening in fashion and culture, it's like everybody's into the 90s vibe. A lot of young people are getting fashion and style tips from the 90s Art School feed. It’s no different than in the nineties when we were fascinated with the vibe and the look of 70s fashion and style.”
It’s a project that’s very much a celebration of a particular time and scene. But the concepts of tight-knit communities, fading ties, and ultimate reunions are universal.
The interest has snowballed with submissions from other art school alums with shoeboxes of their own. Now, the archive is thousands of images from dozens of art schools. “The good news is I have a background in technology, so we just launched a new submission flow that will make things easier for people to submit, and also allow them to add a little bit more metadata to the photos so that they can translate better into our digital universe.”
The project’s momentum is snowballing too. “I've got years of posts banked, and if all goes well, we're in the early stages of publishing a book. I love the idea of turning this into something that you could actually hold in your hand.”
Recruiters are always stressing the importance of doing passion projects and including them in your portfolio. It’s an unfiltered way of seeing who you are and what you would do if you had complete creative freedom. Atkatz has a day job as the founder of inside.company, an ad agency based in Miami. But it’s only part of the picture.
“My balance between work that I do for clients and passion projects that I do is really important because they keep my creative juices flowing. I strongly believe you’ve got to do both. If you just chase industry work, it's easy to burn out.”
Before our call ended, I made sure to ask Atkatz what advice he’d like to share with fellow creatives already feeling that burnout.
“Make time to do the stuff that you love. Look for opportunities in unexpected places. We already do that as ad creatives, but do it in your life. This whole project just came out of old photos that people thought were garbage basically. Look everywhere.”