History Within A Frame: Why Film Photography Endures
Why is film photography still relevant in 2023? Why is it relevant at all when we have digital cameras? Why do people care about film photography when almost everyone has a camera in their pocket all the time?!
A Tangible Connection To The Past
Asking why film photography is still relevant begs the question – ‘Why is photography relevant at all?’ Since Adam and Eve people have been telling stories about their lives and what it meant to them. Cherishing a moment in their memory until they pass and the memory is passed onto the last person they told. In the 21st century, its not different.
WE WANT TO TELL A STORY or CHERISH A MEMORY! That is the essence of photography.
Just like the feeling of when you take a polaroid and you INSTANTLY get a picture of the moment that just happened, humans love a tangible piece of a moment. So every time we lay eyes on the image, it takes us back to that moment, that season of our life or brings back memories of that loved one that isn’t here anymore.
Film give you a tangible piece of YOUR history. Something that you were there for and experienced and you are now, essentially, HOLDING A MEMORY.
I love to look at each roll of film as a slideshow of my life. Where I am, who I’m with and what I’m doing. You can get a similar feeling though smartphones or digital camera but there is nothing quiet like when you are literally holding a piece of film with images on it that are from a time that you experienced.
Film is but a moment of time placed on a tangible object to be remembered for as long as the film remains.
A memory saved on an image
I can’t remember every detail about this day, but I can remember a lot more than I would have if I didn’t have this image.
Aesthetic Authenticity
Film photography provides an authenticity that digital cannot. Digital photos are easily manipulated and with artificial intelligence being a part of the internet now, it’s harder than ever to know what is real and what is fake. You can’t fake film. The grain, the colour tones, the way the light reacts. You can make a digital image look similar to a film image but will never have the seal of aesthetic authenticity that film does. Film seems to have a way of captivating people attention even nowadays.
Film photography FEELS real! The images almost have a life or breath to them that digital images can’t recreate. Every time I have images printed from a roll of film they impress me much more than edited digital images ever will simply because they are REAL. Not 1’s and 0’s on an SD card then enhanced to make the image look half decent while editing.
Digitising film images is something a lot of film photographers practice regularly but I think there is still something to be said for feeling a film image evokes rather than a digital/digitally enhanced image creates.
Even the fact that each film camera itself will be slightly different to another. I could have 2 ‘Ricoh KR-Supers’ and take a photo at the same time, with the same settings on the same film and they COULD come out very different depending on a lot of factors. The unknown realm of the film being inside of a camera and not seeing whether you got the image you wanted, how you wanted adds to the authenticity. Humans make mistakes, humans made cameras, therefore, cameras will make mistakes sometimes too. Even if you do get light leaks, dusty or warped film, it all adds to the adventure and exploration of film photography.
Creation And Anticipation
Creating images with film requires patience. It might take a week or 2 to finish all the images on a 36 image roll. Then you have to send it to a lab to be developed (I recommend ‘Walkens’ in Melbourne, Australia), wait for the negatives to get back or have the lab scan your images. THEN, and only after then can you have a look at the images you have taken. This can take from a week to 4 weeks depending. The creation of images with film is a process that is not for the impatient. IT TAKES TIME. Not only does the time require patience but it also deepens your feelings towards the images. You care if the shutter was too high or low because you only had one shot at that moment and that the moment is now lost to the annals of time and memory IF you didn’t get it right.
The creation of images has fascinated humans since the first ever photo 1827 as it is a piece of time, frozen forever. It is almost as if it is a sort of time travel to capture moments from our current and look back on them in the future. Or we NOW look back on images we have from the past! The creation of film images is almost like a photographer ‘ritual’. Ritual meaning – ‘a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.’ Developing film images is the just that! A solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to prescribed order!
In a time of instant gratification, film photography stands as a patient craftsman. The deliberate process of capturing a moment, waiting for the development, and holding the tangible outcome teaches us patience and intentionality. The scarcity of shots in a roll moves us to choose each frame carefully. This mindful approach is a stark contrast to the rapid-fire nature of digital photography.
Film photography is photography in it’s purest form.
A medium that captures a moment in time physically, on something you can hold and see with your own eyes. Takes a careful, thought out system to process and at any moment a mistake could be made and the images lost. Film photography is as human as photography gets. As time and technology marches forward and there a new ways to experience photography, there will still always be a place for film photography simply because of its simplicity and humanity. When people see film, they see other people. Not an image on a screen.