all Photos (embiggenable)
view camera - 8x10 color negative
MICHAEL JOHNSTON’S CALL FOR BAKER’S DOZEN submissions, re: film, got me to thinking about, well…film. Or, to be precise, making pictures with film and submitting one of my pictures that was made using film.
So, I took a trip down memory lane, picture making wise, and rummaged around looking for files of scans made from ancient pictures made using film. Came across a number of submission possibilities but ended up choosing one of the pictures from my death in ER series as the “winner” and sent it on to T.O.P.. That choice was based upon the fact that it depicts something ya don’t see or picture everyday and it was made with a camera-WIDELUX 1500 (120 film)-very few have ever seen much less used. Which got me to thinking…
….back in the good ol’ days, I used so many different cameras-35mm/120mm cameras, multiple view cameras 4x5>8x10, multiple Polaroid cameras, 2 different rotating lens panoramic cameras, half-frame cameras and other exotica + way too many film variants to mention. All of which I used to photograph all manner of things….which got me to thinking about Bob Dylan’s song I Contain Multitudes in which he wrote/sang:
“….I paint landscapes, and I paint nudes
I contain multitudes”
In any event and all of that written, it begs the question, do I miss it? Answer: kinda but not with much of a sense of longing to repeat it. To be precise, I do miss the look of C prints made from 8x10 color negatives. Nothing in the digital world equals it. In addition it is also worth noting that most of my family and friends and family/friends gatherings, events, etc. were photographed with the use of Polaroid cameras and films. And, I have thousands of prints to show for it.
While I am never going back to photographing with an 8x10 view camera, I have added a instant print feature to my family/friends and events picturing activity; the addition of an INSTAX printer to my out-and-about kit. Just as making a Polaroid picture and passing it around was a big hit in the past, making a “snapshot” with my iPhone, sending it to the INSTAX printer and then passing that instant print around incites exactly the same kinda hit. And so, my INSTAX print collection grows and grows and grows.
A bit of photography history, re: the instant prints in this entry: In the book, The Art of the American Snapshot in the chapter titled, Fun under the Shade of the Mushroom Cloud - 1940-1959,
… Praised as a “worthwhile recreation” that teaches “observation, alertness, and patience.” photography was also an extremely popular diversion in the late 1940s and 1950s… by late 1944 and 1945, more Americans from all walks of life made more photographs than ever before… in the 50s as Hollywood opened the to the bedroom, snapshooters also began to share some of their secrets with their cameras, giving glimpses of what they did in the privacy of their homes… Not wanting to be left out of this profitable market, Polaroid advertised how it “Perks up a party” and suggested to hostesses that they throw a “Polaroid Picture Party”….
I believe that Polaroid was ideally suited to implementing the idea that “snapshooters also began to share some of their secrets with their cameras, giving glimpses of what they did in the privacy of their homes”. While some were snapping away at “secrets” with their Brownie cameras, Polaroid pictures came straight out of the camera thus avoiding the possibility of censorship and the potential embarrassment of trying to have your film processed at the corner drugstore or eventually at Fotomat.
In fact, although I do not know how it could organized but a curated exhibition of “snapshooter” photographs-let’s call it “erotica”-could be fascinating to see. I’d bet there must be hundred of thousands, if not millions, of such photos out there hiding in closets or under beds.
FYI, I never threw a Polaroid Picture Party” but I did take a Polaroid camera to a lot of parties.
my Halloween party costume ~ c. 1969