What is your history going to look like?
The days go by fast and we all make choices on how we want to live our lives, but we often forget to ask.. how do we document it all?
So you think you suffer nostalgia? You like Mazzy Star and Big Thief and Julia Jacklin and Jeff Buckley and Mitski and The Doors and Neil Young? But you don’t shoot film?
Well then, I am sorry to break it to you, but you aren’t really a true die-hard when it comes to yearning over the years that have passed. You are no maestro to remembering a life well lived.
Don’t even begin to tell me about what it was to be a teenage girl sitting by a river listening to the sound of it run as you thought back to the feeling of being a child. I have no ears for your laments of the best days of your life.
Honestly, it pains me deeply to say this to you, but if you aren’t documenting your life on film in preparation for the best cup of tea and afternoon of nostalgic reflection in your retirement, then what are you really even doing?
Those that don’t well and truly commit to the analog tribute of one’s life will probably turn into the doomed lost souls that show you their camera roll for an hour every time they pull their phone out.
Your photos suck.
No one cares.
I’ll see the rest of you by the fire with your photo albums of film, and I will give it my all to reminiscing on how you spent your days.
We don’t really think about what remembering our youth is going to look like when we’re older.
We know how our parents and grandparents remember theirs — through old photo albums, dusty prints, boxes of film photos that tell the story in full.
But what will it look like for us?
Scrolling through old Instagram accounts? Opening Snapchat memories from a decade ago? Logging back into iCloud and hoping the photos are still there?
Do we get on our phones and look at images we barely remember taking? Do the iPhone photos of us even feel like us? Do they actually represent what it was to be alive back then?
I accidentally stumbled upon the world of analogue photography when I was around the age of thirteen. Considering I was born in 2002, it wasn’t an expected fate. My dad, who was born in 1971 and who had spent his youth surrounded by film cameras, didn’t understand how I could possibly want to wait to see my photos when I could see them instantly with the use of digital... let alone pay to see it. But the inquisitive mind of a teenage girl has been known to counter the words of their parents, so of course I went out and did what my heart desired to do.
This investigation of the world of analogue photography began at thirteen and now, nearly ten years later, has served me in more ways than it has not. It has been a joy to learn and look back on. So much so that I intend to keep doing it throughout the rest of my 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and every other cherished year from then. And if I am not fortunate enough to live long enough to document all my non-promised decades, I will rest happy knowing that I had done photographic justice to the ones that I did see.
And yes, I am totally aware that I am being totally intense and that this Substack post is so awfully dramatic. But I take life seriously enough to not be serious enough to worry about sounding crazy or feel any unease when spending money on analogue photography. Over the years I have learnt some cheat codes to saving money when it comes to shooting film... I’ll save that Substack post for another day. As Jane Wagner once said “Reality was once a primitive method of crowd control that got out of hand. In my view, it’s absurdity dressed up in a three-piece business suit.”
If you got this far, bless you and have a blessed night. I will now be retiring to the fire and watching Grays the Mountain Sends by Bryan Schutmaat on YouTube. Bye
