Film

Lately I have been trying to remember my old interests. I once used to play a bass guitar, take tons of photographs and work on my car. Fortunately, I seemed to have worked myself out of a job on the latter but the first two are do for a resurgence.

It's always been my philosophy that the best rain during a creative dry spell is to deliberately break your own artistic rules. I for one hate really kitschy photographs for example; "Holga App" iPhone photos on facebook are among the worst. To save this before it becomes a rant I will just say that I don't own an iPhone and that a Holga not a creative medium. Anyway, I thought about getting a digital camera and doing regular "photo blogging" but I just cannot bring myself to own a digital camera after so many years of devotion to my good friend D-76 process film. Also, I can't afford one.

However, I did find one artistic rule I can break for the sake of rekindling my inner photographer: paying someone else to develop my film. In the past I have only ever gotten my color film professionally developed simply because the chemistry for color film is absurdly expensive. 

Being that I live in NYC's most um, tan, Borough, it has been hard to find a reliable, nearby photolab that does not also sell Snapple and Tampons two aisles over. Cue the good ol' fashioned mail away photo lab. I remember my parents sending rolls to a company called "Seattle Film Works" back in the day but their prices are a bit higher than The Darkroom's.

So "The Darkroom" and a stranger's chemicals all over my film. Nervous of course, but excited to back "behind the lens."

Below is an excerpt from a previous rekindling expedition. I took my favorite lessons from high school advanced photography, (Gilbert Fastenaekens night photography and Man Ray's solarizations) and combined them thus:

Also evidenced is my econmic status at the time. Though this is a final print, it was made on a scrap. Waste not...