A variety of new digital filters will make a photograph look vintage. The inauthenticity of the effect is irrelevant: it’s enough to evoke an audience’s sense of the past.

In 1977, at the International Center of Photography in New York, the late American photographer William DeLappa exhibited a series of black-and-white images entitled “The Portraits of Violet and Al.” Revolving around the title characters, it appeared to be a collection of several dozen photographs made by different people from the late 1940s through the early ’60s. Most were snapshots, though one looked like an ID picture made for some official purpose.