(Re) Development: A Return (and a Bit of a Rant) to Physical Photography

In the treasure trove of my attic, next to badly tuned acoustics from a pre-teen fixation and the jars of street find specimens, is a small tote bag of memories. Stacks of Fujifilm photographs are spread out like a dealer’s choice, highlighting the best (and most grim) moments from my life: late-night COVID games of pass-the-bottle, horror show Halloween parties, romantic snapshots leading to inevitable disaster, the one birthday where I threw a gender-swap villain get-together — my Cruella ensemble was a full meal because this cartoonish twunk ATE! In our so-called advanced world of instant satisfaction, film photography is making a comeback. 

If you’ve read any of my features, you know I’m a strong advocate for all things physical — tapes, DVDs, music, fist fights, romance, the works! The same goes for when capturing the best moments of our lives. My earliest memories of physical photos stemmed from family vacations to Southern California. My mom would create carefully-categorized kits for my sisters and me to make sure we were equipped for the excursion: sample-size sunscreen, sunglasses with the lens in the shape of a three-circle silhouette of Mickey Mouse, single-servings of fruit snacks or crackers to beat the royal pricing of any amusement park junk food and, of course, a single disposable film camera glazed with that classic emerald green decal. Without a thought of preservation, I was snapping everything through bulb flashes or silent clicks. And in its blurry, granular glory, I had a 27-spread of our trip from the first pit stop in the Mojave Desert to where the film eventually ran out with a photo of a leaning sandcastle in Newport Beach. 

It was those blips of imperfections, snapshots of nonsense, that felt more human than anything your average smartphone can point and click. The newest model of iPhone comes with an entire toolbox of photo editing — filter, ratio sizing, flash brightness, red-eye detection, even three separate lenses if you can afford it. This convenient access can make your basic Instagram photo dump into frame-worthy portraits. Your aesthetically pleasing brunch, the skyline from a top-level hotel room, the thousands of headshots your sister forced you to take in some shrubbery on your only day off… Okay, maybe that last one is just me. There are millions of pictures at your fingertips, and yet they all feel like e-waste. 

Now, what you keep in your virtual photo libraries of Snapchat memories and Instagram drafts is your business. Some can be as valuable as your grandma’s scrapbook, but they’re not as everlasting. With its breaches of personal security, modern technology has yet to earn my trust. Behind its falsified data storage is a torn opinion if you should delete a photo of your grandmother from four years ago. If that doesn’t make you worried, what happens when your phone becomes obsolete without an upgrade? Those who don’t upload their data to the all-mighty “cloud” are vulnerable to losing it all! That hurts the most…

Now, this op-ed of nonsensical ramblings wasn’t supposed to be damning technology, but photography is one of humanity’s true forms of expression. As polished and filtered as we try to make our glimpses in life, there’s something more charming in taking your used-up film to your local developers and seeing how poor the photos turned out. Plus, by the time you get the receipt, you’ll definitely want to hold on to the laminated copies of gold. So the next time you’re out and about, hitting a house party or a family outing, be sure to pack a spool of film with you and capture a blast-from-the-past quality that’s both nostalgic and personally yours!

Read more from Alton Barnhart:
My Dark Twisted Sinful Sinister Admire… Karaoke!
Affordably Avant-Garde: Fashion on a Budget

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