It starts with the camera, that stubbornly uncooperative machine. A film camera demands respect. It is heavy, mechanical, and intimidating. It’s a machine that says, “I will work, but only if you know how.” This is part of the joy of film photography: it’s just – difficult.
The joy is not the easy kind. There are no instant results. Each press of the shutter is a commitment, a careful, considered, precious action. You need to know about; colour temperature, contrast, reciprocity failure, film batch variation, the state of your chemicals, the perfect working order of your shutter and your light meter. If it all doesn’t work, and work perfectly, none of it works. And that takes nerves of steel and years of dedication.
There’s a quality to film that digital hasn’t quite managed to replicate. It’s not just the look, though there’s that too. It’s the process. It’s knowing that you, and only you, made that image. The machine didn’t do it for you, you worked with the machine and, despite everything, you made it happen.
The darkroom is the centre of this strange alchemical art. Developing your own film is a ritual. You mix the chemicals, measure the temperature, load the film in complete darkness. It’s tactile, almost meditative. The Enlargers and trays and tongs and safelights. It’s part art, part craft, part prayer. Dodging and burning, coaxing details out of shadows, balancing contrast. It is skill, judgement, experience and hope. I feel very lucky that it was part of my working life for so long.
Digital photography, by comparison, is so much simpler. Infinite shots. Instant feedback. Editing at the push of a button. It’s almost absurd to keep shooting when digital exists, but, my 25 years in film keeps it fresh. My eyes are still looking for photographs, still seduced by the gambit of narrative, a moment of place and time, of light and composition, a blend that creates meaningful images.
So that discipline, the discipline of Film, is still important in a world of instant, where the risk (and perhaps reward) has been written out by code and software. You still need to know your subject, you still need to build a narrative, you have to work with an open mind and an open heart. You are there to connect your subject to your audience with nothing more than a tube of polished glass and a chip of silicone. Time is what makes it important, of value, to be desired; the time, the thought, the care, in carefully constructing a story.
Photographs on large format, colour transparency, between 1982 and 2005. With immense an unending appreciation to clients:
