Analog in a time of Artificial Intelligence

Last year I decided to take a poke at film photography. In reflection it likely has to do with the subliminal pressure AI has put on digital photography as a practice. We already struggle with authenticity in the art world. It’s not painting. It’s not cinema. Established professional or commercial photographers may have found their place in spite of cries against over-manipulation but for the rest of us, there’s a growing sense that the authenticity of photography is under attack.

This craft is always on shaky footing. I think its ability to capture light (whether we debate that light itself is reality/true) and to be reproducible actually challenge its standing as an art form. I’ve started to see more photographers make the shift to installation art, presumably to take images and make them one-of-a-kind. To increase their value via their scarcity. A good pivot. But if the photo is only a portion of a project, is it still photography?

So film for me is a natural step backwards. It does not necessarily address the reproducibility issue although moving a negative to a print is not as simple as it may have been 40 years ago. I do still need to put the negatives through a computer for final editing and processing. But it’s also fraught with danger! What if I misread the light? What if there is an error in processing? What if water or heat or cold damage the film itself!

But first things first. Where do I get a camera? Why, create a photography project that required film, of course! What about a grant-funded project to bring film into a community space? Imagine that! I was provided a half frame camera from Flic Film when I collaborated with The Camera Store on a Chinatown Photowalk process in partnership with Friends of Chinatown. (deep breath) That’s a lot of moving parts. But the end result was that I was provided a test/sample camera made of plastic retailing 40CAD and a roll of film. What excitement! The film is a grainy ASA400 black and white. The camera is a fixed aperture of f8 and shutter 1/100s. The mechanisms are rough and the plastic is flimsy but here’s my first roll, developed by local vendor Neat Film Lab.

The negatives were digitized and I was able to massage them for crop angle and some dodging and burning. It’s fascinating seeing how film captures light. It’s also fascinating how intentional I had to be to slowly click through 36 frames without knowing if I was even seeing the light or the scene correctly. The viewfinder is a tiny plastic window that is offset and has no markings for focal distance. So basically you point, shoot, and hope for the best. It was so fun.

It’s a small taste but I’m hooked. Let the analog adventure begin!