Yesterday, I put my old Polaroid SX-70 camera to use with a pack of Impossible Black and White instant film. The irony is that instant photography takes more time per capture than digital cameras do when I count shielding the film from light for a few minutes while it develops and the capacity of my digital camera to make bracketed shots with one click of the shutter realease button or bursts of several shots in sequence.
Original capture on Impossible Project B&W film
I feel differently working with analog media in photography. Shooting film feels more connected to mother earth. The tools are physical objects functioning in mechanical actions inside my camera: opening and closing shutters, advancing roll film, ejecting instant film. I have a wider selection of actions to perform as well: loading and unloading film, developing prints with chemistry (or waiting while instant film chemistry works its magic), pulling integral instant prints from a camera and shielding them from light, pulling, peeling, and waiting for Polaroid Land camera film to develop, etc.
Repeatedly, new inventions have provided quicker, less physically demanding tools and methods to get clean clothes, clean dishes, hot food, transportation for school, work, vacation, or family, and photographs! While it is easier to do more and more things, however, we’ve lost the down time that slower processes give us. In a way, every job is easier, but our lives are harder as we fit more and more tasks into our days.
Analog photography is one step back into the past that I can actually take. “You can’t turn back the clock,” the saying goes; but I can with my film cameras go back to a slower paced time, taking time to watch the seconds tick away while physical processes unfold into photographic images.
