We’ve always had a secret love affair with film photography. I always obsess with colleagues whose work is mesmerizing and constantly distracts me with endless amounts of Instagram scrolling. There is a certain je-ne-sais-quoi with film. The kind that used to prevail up until almost 12 years ago until digital photography started to boom. I quietly integrate it in our documentation and almost all of my personal work and travel is medium format and 35 mm film. I cannot officially make this post about the whole ‘film vs. digital’ debate since the two rein my craft, but with a certain shift this year we decided to talk about it.

Last Saturday, Victor and I went to a photography show where there are storefronts and pop-ups for new gear and old (mainly old, as in previously owned). I was looking for something in particular. After talking to just about every vendor and noticing I was the only woman in the whole place seeking to purchase in the crowd of photography veterans, I thought what an honor to be among some of the people that paved the way for a career like mine. The breadth of tools from only 10 -15 years ago are not the same as today, and every day famous brands keep trying to push the envelope farther and farther creating a variety of styles and perspectives.

I love the classics, thus I love film. I don’t come from a family that hoards hundreds of family albums and tons of portraits all over the house. My mom was the first of her family to move to this country, and with that, many of her personal belongings stayed in her home country of El Salvador. Dad, the same. The only images we grew up admiring with my brothers was the classic black and white school picture of mom and the small photoshop image of my grandmother plastered on a handwritten poem. Maybe that inadvertently skewed my eye towards the richness and true black and white tones. The few albums my mom was able to scrapbook together while she began her journey in the States are mainly compiled from polaroids and snaps developed from disposable cameras.

This is the real reason why I chose to incorporate film in our work. It’s not necessarily to have the prestige or the ‘wow’ factor. Or even because of the aesthetic (although I can’t lie, I love love love the aesthetics), but it’s to appeal to that little girl one day that will be ransacking her parent’s closets looking to play dress up only to find a piece of her family history. I can go on and on about the reasons on why every photographer should have some sort of basic background on film photography. Not just for the look of it, the ease, detail retention, better shooting, etc. Above all these semantics, it’s to keep the history of our craft alive while contributing other families histories. Gear used: Mamiya 645af, fuji 400h

Scans by The Find Lab

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