Choosing Analog in a Digital World

Choosing Analogue in a Digital World brings together five photographers from the Avis Street Photo Studio for an evening of artist talks, image sharing, and conversation exploring the relationship between traditional photographic processes and contemporary visual practice. Through personal and group projects, documentary work, portraiture, and experimental photography, artists will reflect on how darkroom techniques continue to shape the way they see, create, and communicate in both analog and digital environments.

Guests will experience a darkroom tour, see presentations of photographic work produced in the studio’s community darkroom, hear stories about the creative process behind the images, and engage in discussion about craft, experimentation, and the evolving role of photography in a rapidly changing technological landscape.

The event highlights photography as a form of design thinking. The darkroom teaches foundational principles of composition, light, contrast, sequencing, and visual communication that remain essential across creative disciplines. At the same time, the event explores how artists integrate analog traditions with contemporary digital tools and workflows, celebrating design as both a technical practice and a tool for documenting community, preserving memory, and imagining new futures.

Located in Southwest Detroit, the Avis Street Photo Studio is a space where artists, youth, and residents learn, create, and share stories through photography.

UN SUSTAINABILITY GOALS

We use Detroit's UNESCO City of Design designation as a call to action for Detroiters to embrace the Sustainable Development Goals in their own communities, contributing to the active effort of solving global interconnected issues.