Film photographers have never looked more miserable
I've got more mileage from this photo than an 84' Ford Pinto.
If we love it all so much, why do many of us look so damn miserable?
It seems as if non-digital photography is as popular as it's ever been. We profess to love the process, we adore our decrepit olde cameras. We love "slowing down." We love selling our sparable organs for film money.
If we love it all so much, why do many of us look so damn miserable?
Why so serious?
I suppose it's our own faults. Non-digital photography has been stamped with a near-mythical status. Maybe it's the process of chemistry and patience that makes us somehow feel as if we owe it to ourselves to be solemn and serious, or at least seem that way.
But why? What's the purpose behind the ominous faces and stoic poses, be they real or manufactured?
Truth be told, I'm likely the happiest you will ever see me when I have one of my shitty olde cameras in-hand. I love them. They love me, and the photography I produce with them fills me with an odd sense of masochistic satisfaction because it feels as if I've overcome something impossible each and every time.
So why do I pull this tragic face for my social accounts and website?
Scroll through the images and you'll see about an 80/20 split between misery and elation. The faces of men and women who either look like they've won the lottery or just completed the self-guided tour at Auschwitz.
People holding their cameras at eye-level with hard-brow scowls. Waist-level viewfinder cameras glared down at with visible disgust.
Don't get me started about my large and ultra large format brethren with our giant cameras. We seem to be the most disgusted of them all (refer back to the top photo)*.
Maybe we just want to seem cool and mysterious, to be perceived as working in some high and lofty space of photography where there's no room for happiness.
It's all about "the work" and so help me God if we allow ourselves to ever contaminate "the work" with a smidgen of enjoyment.
*Authors Note: I also have a hypothesis about the direct proportion of camera size to hat brim circumference amongst photographers, but that's a story for another time.
Most, but not all.
Could this photographic self-loathing be a product of a learned behavior, the expectation that anything less than absolute seriousness could take us from the realm of practitioner to the lowly existence of mere hobbyists?
Is social media to blame? Afterall, you'll see a fair amount of people holding their film cameras, perhaps more so than the number of photographs you'll see being made with those cameras.
The ubiquitous "film camera in the bathroom mirror selfie".
I'm as guilty as any. Afterall, the act of owning and using film and non-digital cameras has taken over the craft itself, and if it truly hasn't conquered, it's certainly coming close. At least it seems that way.
This isn't to say we all flip the tragedy switch as soon as we wrack a roll of film or load up our film holders. At the risk of sounding uncharacteristically optimistic, I truly believe that most of us adore the use of our cameras. We love to share the love, and we love it when people love that we love to share our love.
That's a lot of love to hide behind a sour patch expression. And this brings us back around to one glaring question: are we afraid to be ourselves?
Learning to love again...and again.
I crawl back to the furthest memories tattooed on the back of my brain, to the times when I first started making photographs. The recollections are getting hazy and the fog of age and bad consciences make the particulars grow dim, but I do easily recall one thing: the joy I had for taking pictures.
The paradox is that I started out shooting film, then switched to digital. Granted, when I started out with my brand new $265 Nikon N55 (which I saved up for) I had no choice but to shoot film. Digital cameras were in their infancy and even the price for a 5MP Kodak Easyshare was horrifying.
I shot everything, anything. Seeing the shallow depth of field at wide apertures fascinated me and hell I suppose it still does. Two things I distinctly recall from those early days: being filled with absolute elation with every successful frame, and the sensation of complete joy when a technique I read about turned out to work.
Looking back, I see that I've never lost my love for making pictures, no matter if they're digital or otherwise. The happiness is still there, and it's amplified inside me whenever I use some obscure archaic process or an ancient camera I've torn apart and resurrected.
Why do we tend to hide this joy born from making photographs whichever way we enjoy most? Why hide that light under a bushel?
I'm guilty of "putting on the face" as much as anybody whenever I break out my cameras. I'm sure I'll keep doing it, at least to some degree, but I also hope to remember why I choose to make pictures the hard way in the first place.
Once full-time nomad photomaker settled pro tem in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina. Historical and alternative printer. Cyanotype psychopath. Film of every format. Fuji apologist. Founder/editor-in-chief of Subculture Analog.
