The purpose of this photo narrative is to express the importance of holding a physical photo, the limited significance of digital photos and how photography has documented my life. I’ve always loved photography; I grew up with it. My dad is a professional photographer, and for as long as I can remember he has always had a camera around or in my face taking my photo, creating a giant collection of memories of my life. From the day I was born to now, only now its not only my dad taking my picture, its me, my friends and the rest of my family. I mean everyone has a camera with them all the time now, so why not take pictures to remanence about your favourite memories, or times with your favourite people? Photos were something I relied heavily on during the never-ending COVID lockdowns, looking back at my memories with people I missed and loved is what kept me going. Well, that Netflix and walking my dogs in suburbia, ah the world we live in now. Let’s start from the beginning, below you’ll see a collection of images from my childhood.
“For photographs express a desire for memory and the act of keeping a photograph is, like other souvenirs an act of faith in the future.” (Edwards, 2009)
“For photographs express a desire for memory and the act of keeping a photograph is, like other souvenirs an act of faith in the future.” (Edwards, 2009) These photos currently live in the basement of my dad’s house, on a dusty bookshelf in the rec room. Almost a dozen three-inch-thick photo albums documenting the beginning of my life, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and so on – but not a single album after 2008. To this day every time I walk by them, I still get the urge to pull all of them out, scatter them across the floor and go through them one by one, pulling my favourites out of the falling apart sleeves to snap a quick pic on my phone so I can have it at my fingertips for next time. I never realized how lucky I was to have all these photos of me growing up, let alone having the original physical copies of them. I can still remember the excitement in my house every time my dad got home from Blacks, the photography store that would develop all the images he took of us. My dad, my mom my brother and I would gather in the living room looking at each picture and remembering the memories we made just a few months or weeks beforehand.
Now I am the photographer of the friend group, constantly begging my friends for just one more photo. I’m the girl who pulls out her iPhone to snap a few twenty-something photos when all my friends are together, at a holiday or celebration, at a concert or any other time something that makes me happy is happening. And don’t get me wrong, having a massive collection of memories on my phone is amazing, I love looking through them, but it still doesn’t compare to the aesthetic quality of images ‘back in the day’ and the physical act of holding a photograph of a happy memory.
When I was seventeen, I was gifted a instax mini – one of those brightly coloured ‘polaroid’ cameras. You know the ones, where the film paper costs twenty-something bucks for a pack of twenty, or something ridiculous. I loved it, I still do. The idea of taking a photo and having a physical copy of it pretty much immediately is amazing, waiting those few minutes for the photo to develop almost kills me. And then once it develops, it gets passed around my friend group for everyone to take a crappy photo of it on their iPhone before the argument begins on who gets to keep it.
A few years ago, I started going to Walmart to buy those twelve-dollar plastic 35mm Kodak disposable cameras. I fell in love with the film photography, and so did my friends. Going to a poker night and leaving one on the table unsure of what I would find in the envelope weeks later when I picked up the photos. The hazy, grainy images filled with either the brightest colours or the dullest colours you’ve ever seen, with a little thumb in the corner, because who knows how to use a camera that isn’t attached to an iPhone? I also oddly enjoyed the waiting game, waiting the weeks or months until a camera was full before taking it in to get developed, being asked if I wanted a CD with the images or prints, and then waiting anxiously for three weeks until the photography store called to say the photos were in. The image below was taken last summer on one of my famous 35mm Kodak disposable cameras.
And once again, like my memories with my family – my friends and I would gather around a table and look at all the memories we had made over the past few weeks or months and argue about who got to take the photo home with them. Eventually, I was tired of getting comments of how bad disposable cameras are for the environment, and how expensive it was to develop them. Seventy-six dollars for two rolls of film? That is insane. So sadly, I transitioned back to taking photos on my phone. It’s still great and I own one of those personal canon photo printers, so when I take a really great photo with my friends, or my family I pull that out of my drawer, print the glossy photo and pin it up on my wall.
After using the good old ‘camera’ app on my phone for many months I was introduced to a new app ‘Dispo’. The famous David Dobrik app that brings the fun of a disposable camera to a digital world. Kinda sad, but its fun. The app allows me to zoom in or out, turn the flash on or off and snap a picture. So far it sounds like the camera app, but there’s a catch. The photos take time to ‘develop’ so they cannot be seen until the next morning at 9 a.m. The other catch, is that the app provides some kind of film filter to the photo and you can’t modify or change in anyway, similar to film, you get what it gives you (Bursztynsky, 2021). Of course, the app has a social aspect to it, where people can follow you, like your images (if you share) and you can create film rolls that you and your friends can add your images to – almost like a giant photo album. I enjoy it, it’s a little fancier than the average camera app and it adds some excitement to my life when I wakeup in the morning to all the photos from the day or night before. By 9:30 my friends are texting the group chat asking for all the photos! The image below is one of my Dispo photos I took of my mom this summer at the beach. You can see the hazy, grainy filter that is applied to make it appear like a photo taken on a roll of film, but it still doesn’t compare to holding that photo in my hands, feeling the memory; the warmth of the sun, the annoying sand all over me, hearing the leaves on the tree flowing in the wind.
It is haunting how far photography technology has come in the short time I have been alive, as you can see above through my photographic narrative, I have experienced it all – on both sides of the camera. Through all of these experimental methods of photography with my friends the narratives have changed from what used to be “Can we stop taking pictures now? It’s not family Christmas” to conversations about how grateful all my friends are to have these photos to share with their kids one day. The memories held inside these photos are the chaos that built us. Our kids will see their younger super cool parents hanging out with the people they call aunt and uncle while we will see our mistakes, our lessons, and our growth. “Photographs speak to ‘having been there’: they are fragmented and irreducibly of the past or of death itself.” (Edwards, 2009) In the future I hope the images that are now pinned up on their bedroom walls will turn into faded, folded corner photos in a drawer in their family’s house, and when they find them and their kids ask about the memory or the night that it reminds them of where we came from, and how far we’ve come. That is what a physical photo makes you feel, it demands response; something incomparable to that of a digital photo that sits at the top of my camera roll on my iPhone, that will forever transfer to my newest iPhone until I scroll up and delete it. I will leave you with the following quote for food for thought, and maybe the next time you’re in a Walmart you too will pick up one of those twelve-dollar 35mm Kodak disposable cameras, or maybe just maybe you’ll see the importance of having that physical copy of your favourite photo or memory and you’ll print it off.