Analog Photography: why still shoot on film?

Long Reading

About a year ago we added to our schedule of courses and events an analog-photography workshop with a very particular format.

For about a year it has been one of our most requested workshops, and there has not been an edition in which the available places were not sold out.

Like many of our flagship events, part of the activities take place at Spazio Chirale in Garbatella, FabLab and Atelier with good street exposure thanks to two large shop windows and a layout reminiscent of an art gallery.

Process Gallery is how we prefer to call this space of ours, because rather than the works themselves we like to display the processes through which the works are made. “Process Matters” is one of our favourite slogans.

And it is precisely the process that is the protagonist of the story we are about to tell you, and the reason behind the answer to the title of this article.

During one of our crowded workshops, the window of Spazio Chirale had been arranged on theme as usual, and a composition of 35 mm film, artistically displayed in a tangle of strips with the characteristic perforations that make them recognisable even to those who have never taken analog photographs, had attracted the attention of a passer-by.

Spazio Chirale is designed to attract the attention of passers-by, and by now the inhabitants of Garbatella are used to the fact that strange and bizarre things sometimes happen inside, and the window is often the subject of pictures with consequent posts on the social-media groups reserved for the residents of the neighbourhood.

We are therefore used to people who walk in through the entrance door as if it were a shop always open to the public, but in the end we have two windows on the street and a glass door, just like a shop.

So it was not strange that a customer had walked in and was looking with curiosity at the tangle of films and the other strange-looking objects on the table next to the window.

— Good morning, do you want to know something? Please ask.

— Do they still make them?

— What do they still make?

— The films, do they still sell film?

— Of course! Indeed, lately many new films have come out, with new technologies that didn’t even exist twenty years ago.

— But why?

— Why what, sorry?

— Why do they still make them? I thought that by now, with digital cameras, there were no more films. But hadn’t Kodak gone bankrupt? Because that one really looks like a Kodak.

— Kodak was bankrupt, but now it’s back, reorganised, in Germany, Kodak Alaris, makes film. There is also Ilford, repurchased by the old owners who had sold it to a multinational; that one is a Ferrania P30… well, it would be a long story… anyway, analog photography has come back in a big way, you know.

— But why? It really escapes me!

— It’s not strange. It might seem strange, but if you think about it for a moment it isn’t. Let me try to explain. For example, in your opinion, do they still make brushes, canvases and oil paints?

— Of course they do. Why do you ask?

— And doesn’t that seem strange to you?

— Why should it be strange? Painters still exist, and besides, if someone wants to paint, just for fun, there are plenty of people who paint.

— And couldn’t they use a computer with Illustrator or Corel Draw or another drawing program?

— What absurdity! A painter with Illustrator? A painter would no longer be a painter — those who use Illustrator are graphic designers.

— But before personal computers existed, graphic designers used pens, pencils, brushes — the same tools as any graphic artist. Now they use computers because it’s more effective for their work.

— I don’t understand what this comparison has to do with it. Graphic designers are one thing, painters or artists who use pencils, charcoal are another, let’s not confuse ideas… and besides, those who paint, even if they’re not artists, do it out of passion and fun — with a computer it wouldn’t be fun!

— You see that you’re starting to understand?

— No. I don’t understand.

— Yes, you do. The painter expresses his creativity also thanks to the manual process and to his technique that uses certain means and certain products; those who paint have fun, because they express their creativity, the canvas, the brush, their materiality, the mixing of colours on the palette, the smells, the slight sounds that are produced… the process is an integral part of the experience, the process is a fundamental part of artistic expression — it is the path that leads to the final work. Each work is such thanks to the process that produces it. That is why analog photography is something absolutely different from digital photography.

— …That’s true! Did you know I had never thought of that?

— Digital photography is perfect and much more effective than analog photography for many professionals — reporters, industrial photographers — who produce and sell images. There are also artist photographers who express themselves well with the digital process, who love the digital process and who, skilled in the use of products like Photoshop, create works of art of absolute value. Analog photography is simply different, because it follows a very different process. The sensations one experiences while making an analog photograph have nothing to do with the digital workflow (as they call it). They are two different things. Practising sculpture is something different from practising painting or digital graphic art, just as digital photography is something different from analog photography. Today, in this space, we are not doing photography (a term that would in fact be ambiguous) but analog photography. Once upon a time, photography was only analog and was simply called photography. Today there is digital photography, but there is still analog photography, and from what we are seeing, there always will be, just like painting on canvas — and the producers of film, old and new, have understood this well.

The unknown visitor went away satisfied, and even a little cheered, because knowing that a world has not disappeared but is in fact alive and vital is something that, deep down, gives pleasure.

For our laboratory, analog photography has been a winning bet.

Paradoxically, a technology that most people thought had disappeared some twenty years ago is today proposed as a process innovation for visual artists who use photography as an expressive medium.

It was the artists who were the first subjects attracted by our proposal — especially conceptual artists. Modern art is by now based on the balance between its three most important paradigms: aesthetic, technical and conceptual.

For many authors, art is not compatible with the CTRL+Z key of digital tools: the ‘undo’ function that erases mistakes forever from the production process of the work takes value away from the work itself. A unique and unrepeatable process has more value than a serialisable process. Art cannot be serial production!

But that’s not all.

For many of us photography is a hobby, an activity that belongs to the sphere of free time, and when we enter this domain, needs and requirements are very similar to those of professional artists, assuming that art can be a profession.

We are not talking about instant photography, about shots taken to share moments and memories — for those things digital photography is amazingly perfect — we are talking about leisure and free time, we photograph with the same spirit with which we would set ourselves to paint a picture or decorate objects for the home, or any other futile DIY activity.

When we enter this mode, what counts is the fun and the sensory engagement that the activity to which we devote ourselves gives us back.

Our Workshop teaches precisely this. That’s why we wrote at the beginning that it is a Workshop with a very particular format. It is a Workshop that aims to teach how to live an experience rather than the technique needed to practise analog photography.

It is a two-day event designed to transfer and arouse emotions.

Usually we start on Saturday morning, around 10:30, with 12 students and sometimes a distinguished guest, an artist or photographer who can speak about photography as well as about emotions, chemical processes and experiences — about fifteen people in all around a table to introduce the topic and tell what will happen next.

It is at this moment that the students truly understand that they will have to do everything personally, that they are starting a process that will end the next day in the late afternoon. From now on, any action, variation on the theme, mistake will have irreversible effects on the final result, on the photographic prints they will take home on Sunday evening.

“This is the first time you experience this process. When you go out, don’t focus too much on the shots, don’t take today the photo of a lifetime, the scoop that could make you famous — you could destroy the image on the roll with a small thing; in fact, you might not even have the image on the roll. Have you ever loaded a roll before?”

“No, you’ve never done it, but you must have played with a chemistry set, and here you’ll play with chemistry: graduated test tubes, doses, concentrations — the experiments of the chemistry set didn’t always come out right, did they?”

At this point we begin. Bulk film, 30 m roll.

“Watch out for the light, watch out when you handle the loader, the reloadable cartridge opens like this, watch out for the tongue when you close it — light must not enter, photography is made of light but the film is destroyed by light.”

The sensations begin: the smell of factory-fresh emulsion, the rustle of virgin film flowing from the loader.

“Have you put the cartridge spool the right way around? If you wind the roll badly, then it doesn’t run in the camera; you may not notice it and think you’re taking pictures, but then there are no pictures, the negative comes out completely transparent.”

“If you don’t have your own camera, you can use one of ours. Do you have a camera? Do you know how to use it? Show me — no, it doesn’t work, the battery is missing. Yes, it’s analog but it has batteries: they are needed for the light meter, and on this one if the meter doesn’t work it shoots at fixed speed. Yes, it’s a piece of junk, but for a while they made them like this — mechanical but with electronic shutter; it’s analog, not mechanical; electronics is not synonymous with digital, and besides ‘digital’ refers to the sensor, not to the automation of the camera. Anyway, take one of ours.”

“No, they’re not digital, those are also analog — they are the professional cameras of the late 1990s, autofocus, sophisticated sensors, electronics, practically the same as modern digital ones, only they have film instead of a sensor.”

“If you’re not an experienced photographer, they’re the best choice. Frame and shoot, impeccable exposure and focus — one less variable to control in the process.”

But by now we have learned that they will be the last to be chosen, and often they remain on the table.

“You came here to experience analog, and the cameras of the 1970s seem to you more in tune with the mood of the day.”

“That one is beautiful, a professional from the early 1970s. Heavy, isn’t it? Actually it weighs the same as today’s professional cameras but it seems heavier. It’s the touch that is different. Steel, chrome finishes, a sense of solidity and robustness.”

“It also has a pleasant smell — the smell of technology. It looks vintage but smells of high tech, peculiar, isn’t it? How can technology have a smell?”

It is actually the silica gel, put in packaging to absorb humidity and ensure the right conservation environment for products. It is a matter of olfactory memory: all electronic products are sold and stored with silica gel, it is the first smell we feel when we open the box. It was used as far back as the 1970s, and now as then we associate it with technological products.

I have always had the feeling that the satin steel of the old camera bodies enhanced the incense-like fragrance of silica gel, but I don’t say it for fear of seeming an enthusiast.

“I’ll show you how it works.”

A sensation of fluidity and reliability of the mechanisms. Subdued sounds, unmistakable ticks of precision micro-mechanics. The shutter is cocked. You can feel the silence of the spring under pressure.

The unmistakable click of the shot — more a schklock than a click. Digital reflex cameras also click when they raise the mirror, but this is a different click, fuller, richer in harmonics, there’s something more. It’s the 1970s camera body, it has less plastic inside, it resonates differently. It’s a beautiful sound, it gives satisfaction.

“Let’s load the roll. Until the 1980s this mechanism was used here, with the film tongue that has to enter this slit on the half of the spool. If it doesn’t grip the tongue well, it comes loose and the film doesn’t advance. You think you’re shooting, you take pictures and continue to recock the shutter thinking that the frame is advancing — 1, 2, …, 32, 34, we’re nearly at the end, the rolls have 36 exposures, 35, 36, it’s the last, 37, there’s almost always one extra frame, 38, 39, …, there’s something strange, maybe I’ll rewind and take out the roll since it must be finished. Wrong! The roll has never advanced, if you develop it, it comes out completely transparent. Of course you can open and reinsert it better, maybe this time it works, but the photos you thought you had taken were never actually captured — moments and images lost forever.”

“Sometimes, however, you open and find the roll all wound onto the spool. At frame 36 you forced the wind and tore off the other side of the film, which came away from the cartridge. And now? Close immediately, films are made to protect the frames wound deeper in. Let’s pull out the film in the dark and you’ll see something will come out. If we’re lucky we’ve burned only the last 3 or 4 frames.”

“All clear? Loaded properly? Check that the crank on the other side turns when you cock the shutter — that means the film is advancing.”

“I took a test photo, how do I see it? Oh, silly me, there’s no display here!”

“No, in fact you can’t see it, you have to remember the photos you’ve taken, you’ll see it tomorrow if all goes well, after the contact sheets.”

“Off you go everyone, time to take pictures. Lovely, but how nerve-wracking!”

Garbatella isn’t bad to photograph.

“You know what, Garbatella is really photogenic?”

“Here we all are back. How did it go? Beautiful photos? Beautiful I don’t know, but I like some of them, I can’t wait to see them. Oh god, let’s hope they came out! And what if they didn’t? Oh no, I wouldn’t like to be disappointed. Let’s cross our fingers. What an emotion. Anyway, I’ve fallen in love with this little camera, it has a certain something — using it is fascinating…”

“Right, now let’s learn to load the films into the spiral, then to develop them in the tank. In front of you you have some expired films to use in the light to learn how to load them into the spirals. Memorise the procedure, do it with your eyes open, no, don’t try now to close your eyes — build a visual memory because when you’re in the dark you’ll only have touch at your disposal. Learn to open and close the spiral.”

“Right, now try with your eyes closed. Perfect. It seems easy, doesn’t it? Now let’s go down into the darkroom and do the tests in the dark.”

The darkness is dense; in the dark, however, it seems harder.

“Oh god, does it have to be this dark? Shouldn’t there be a red light? Not today. Tomorrow we’ll have the red light, not today because the films are panchromatic — otherwise you couldn’t photograph red objects, OK, yes, they would come out black like in the old silent films, but today modern films are panchromatic, so you have to load them in the dark. Done? OK, it’s easy even in the dark. So, let’s try to load your real rolls.”

“Damn, but this film is different, wider, it’ll never go in! It’s not different, it’s just the one with the photos that you don’t want to call beautiful but that you actually like a lot. The emotion is different, not the film. Calmly, no panic, we have all afternoon ahead of us.”

Rustle of films. Rustle of films sliding through the coils of the spirals.

Finally.

“Have all the tanks been closed? Perfect, switch on the light.”

Fiat lux!

Wow, more and more excited.

We prepare the baths, but first water at the right temperature. Big lecture on the film-development process.

“Sooner or later the lecture has to come — it is still chemical technology, you have to understand how it works.”

“Water at 20 degrees, not one more, not one less. How? Precision alcohol thermometer, it looks like the mercury one but it’s not mercury, and besides it doesn’t go down by shaking it — it goes up and down by itself. A tap like the one in the home bathroom with mixer and thermometer under the stream. Cold, hot, cold, hot, hot, cold, …, just right! Yes, just like in Gaber’s song when you wash your hair.”

We fill the jug with 5 litres of water at 20 degrees.

A little-chemist atmosphere. 1+25 Rodinal solution.

“What does 1+25 mean? Calculator, why 5,000 divided by 26? Wasn’t it 25? Ah, I’ve never been good at proportions, but it’s easy.”

Rodinal, a chemical formula over 100 years old, the first commercial developer in history, used to develop the film we used today made with nanotechnology, which only 5 years ago didn’t exist — yet it is one of the combinations that gives the most beautiful results. The fascination of the analog process is also this.

Developer ready, stop bath ready, fixer ready. The unmistakable smell of photographic chemistry, the colours of the solutions, the open tanks awaiting the first bath, the digital chronometer ready.

“But wouldn’t a nice clock-hand chronometer have been more appropriate? What does that have to do with it, we’re not fanatics, for counting digital is better — wasn’t it invented for that?”

“Ready, go! Pour into the tanks, close, agitate as we taught you, agitate for the first 30 seconds. Stop. We’re at the minute, agitate for 7 seconds, stop. We’re at thirty, agitate for 7 seconds, stop. We’re at the minute, agitate for 7 seconds, stop.”

“How many times do we have to repeat this? We said 8 minutes, come on, we’re nearly at the end.”

“OK, 8 minutes, open the tank, pour out the developer and pour in the stop. No, you don’t have to throw it down the toilet, it’s a chemical product, it has to be properly disposed of. Even the oil you use for frying you have to dispose of and not throw it down the sink.”

“Stop OK, now let’s move to fixing, 7 minutes, agitate every now and then, but relax, what’s done is done. No, don’t tell me that, you’re making me anxious.”

“Perfect, away with the fixer.”

And now, the moment of truth.

“Off goes the first pair to rinse under running water. Seven, eight minutes at least, better 10.”

“Yes, you can open the tank but you can’t see anything anyway. It’s pointless to peek, don’t ruin the film, leave it alone in the spiral while we rinse. Worried face. You saw everything black, didn’t you? Don’t worry, it always seems all black.”

“OK, here we are. A short bath with distilled water and wetting agent to remove the limescale of the tap water. And now, open!”

Drum roll. Tension at its peak. Suspense.

Wow, here are the frames. Cries of joy. Smiling, relaxed faces. Emotion. The photos are there, it seems a miracle! Roll held up like the vial of the blood of San Gennaro.

“Perfect, don’t touch them too much. The emulsion is wet, it scratches easily, don’t raise dust that gets stuck on the emulsion and ruins everything. Don’t worry, it’s wet, you can’t see anything, they’re in negative. They look out of focus. The emulsion is swollen, we’ll see tomorrow how they came out. Analog photography requires patience. Let’s hang up the rolls, and have a good evening. See you tomorrow, 10:30.”

Sunday morning. At 9:30 the first anxious ones are already at Spazio Chirale.

White tables, strips of dry negatives laid out on the tables. Light table and loupes. Scissors. Smell of celluloid.

“Celluloid hasn’t been used for film in at least 90 years. I know, but the negatives still smell of celluloid. What do you know about the smell of celluloid, you’re too young, none of us has ever seen it. I don’t know, but this is the smell of celluloid, I’m sure of it. Well, when I was little ping-pong balls were celluloid and didn’t have this smell. To me it seems like the smell of soap bubbles. What are you saying, soap bubbles don’t have a smell, if anything they have a fragrance. Actually, the wetting agent we used to rinse the films to avoid limescale is also used to make soap-bubble liquids.”

“Now though, cut the negatives into strips of 6 frames and put them in the glassine envelopes.”

“Perfect, everyone in the darkroom.”

Here come the red lights. “How cool.”

Enlargers, trays, tongs. Mix of optical and chemical technology. Smell of analog photography. The unmistakable aroma of the fixing bath.

We start with the contact sheets. Here is the photographic paper. Recognising by touch the side with the emulsion.

Smell of photographic paper. “Please, don’t sniff the open black envelopes with the pack of paper inside, because if someone accidentally turns on the light, you burn 100 euros’ worth of sheets. It’s a darkroom course, not a sommelier course.”

Adjustments, time, let’s try with 4 seconds at F8. We go by experience, they’re contact sheets — then with the individual photos we’ll do the tests carefully.

“Digital timer set to 4 seconds. Digital? Enough with this digital-versus-analog story, the timers have always been digital, the clock-hand ones are inconvenient and no one used them even 30 years ago.”

White light. Four seconds, stop.

“Off into the first bath. Wow. It seems like magic, the sheet was white and now the image is appearing. Here is the strip of small frames, but this time in positive. Damn they’re dark, this one’s light, this one… No, it doesn’t matter, they’re contact sheets, what matters is that you can see what’s in the photo. Now off, all of you do the contact sheet, then back upstairs to choose the first photo to print. Red filter under the enlarger, switch on, paper, what a nice smell, emulsion up, arrangement of the negatives, switch off and put on stand-by, remove filter, timer at 4 seconds — you try at 8 because you have denser negatives — white light, stop, developing bath, wow what magic, now stop bath, now at least ninety seconds in the fix, OK we can turn on the lights. They look nice, go and rinse the contact-sheet print well.”

Now we start the prints. Inserting the negative in the head. “Switch on, projection, adjust size, focus. Here is the focus finder for you. How cool, I see the grain! Perfect, it’s in focus.”

“Now I’ll teach you how to do exposure-test strips.”

“Perfect, now we develop. Beautiful like this in strips, I might almost keep this. For me 6 seconds is fine, better 4, OK let’s say 5 and a half.”

“Beautiful photo. What a wonder. Next one.”

“All clear? There are three enlargers and three lines of trays for the process. The darkroom is all yours.”

Silence. Light sound of the chemicals fluttering slowly in the trays. Time seems to be set on another dimension. Red light, light light, prints lining up on the tables for drying.

Tests, mistakes, experiments, enthusiasms, disappointments, comparisons. “Better lighter, better darker. I’d like this white part this light but also this grey part darker than this.”

“OK. The time has come to talk about contrast adjustment.”

Time passes without anyone realising it any more. In the darkroom, time seems to have stopped, but for the rest of the planet it is already seven in the evening, and it is time to return to the white light of the Spazio Chirale gallery and admire the fruit of one’s own work.

“I would never have imagined that in just two days I would have brought home such beautiful prints.”

As always, the most interesting prints are the ones born of mistakes made by chance — often irremediable but also unrepeatable, not in the same way, not at the same time.

Now it is clear to everyone. Each single print is a unique piece that exists because actions have been performed in a certain way here and now. You can try to repeat those actions a thousand times in the darkroom but you will never get the exact same print, and the sensations you’ll feel making it will never be the same.

It has been two intense but absolutely fun days.

It is for this reason that films are still made, and there is even someone who invests in research and development — but for those who took part in the workshop, this does not surprise at all.