Negatives
Fujifilm, ca. 2019
35mm colour film
16 x 4 cm, folded
Purchased from Foto Source
Personal collection
The film negatives shown here represent an exploration of earlier techniques used to capture significant moments in time. Photography once relied on the processing and development of film, and rolls of film were common household items. Family members would bring out the massive, quintessential photo albums during holiday gatherings, commemorating the snapshots of forgotten vacations, childhood memories, and summer activities from long ago. Developed film was a tangible source of nostalgia – they could easily be tampered with, destroyed, lost, etc. Film was a one-off, unlike today's culture of iPhone photos and social media that serves as a database withholding any memory for an eternity.
While printed photos serve as a great bonding tool, the negatives tend to remain crammed in an envelope in the back cover of the photo album. No one looks through negatives – they are the skeletons of developed film. The cherished object is the photo, not the flimsy plastic exposure rolls. Yet the negatives play a critical role as a safeguard to prevent the deterioration of these memories. In a pre-digital age, negatives were scanned multiple times, resulting in multiple prints of the same photo. Even today, coming across an old set of negatives in one's home brings about a temptation to re-develop those shots. This item not only represents a tangible way to revisit the past, but a significant object that can be used countless times to render a collection of impressions, over and over again (much like the digital SD card serves the same purpose today).
This particular set of negatives date from my trip to Berlin in May of 2019. Taken with my Canon AE-1 and developed at Pond's Foto Source in Guelph, the exposures lie in an album on my bookshelf while the negatives are stored away in what I call my "memory box". I look through my printed exposures many times, examining the composition, lighting, subjects, and memories of each photo. Yet the negatives are kept clean and safe in my box, so that I have the ability to develop them again in the future if need be. When the world is faced with an uncertain future (perhaps due to a pandemic), it is re-assuring to revisit these better times of the past. These negatives provide a feeling of comfort and help one cope with the turmoil of the present. The act of holding film in one's hand serves as a reminder of the fragility of the capture, and ultimately how treasured a tangible item can be in this extraordinarily digital age.
Wanda Bujaki