Toni Ahvenainen
Stored memories
Week 9, Wednesday
I’ve already told you that I have some old film in our fridge (see here), but what I didn’t tell you is that some of those rolls have pictures in them. Grown at the digital age I never clicked with an analog film, but there is one thing I’ve always liked about it – its physicality and worldly character. Image forms into a film with the aid of emulsion which contains light-sensitive chemicals. As such it is trace of physical reality and light that once run through the emulsion. Film rolls that are situated in our fridge contain these kind of traces from at least ten years back when me and Sari where younger and the life we now live didn’t yet exist. I didn’t develop these films because I wanted to preserve the images they contain for some unknown day in future, when we would develop them and find our past again. I think this kind of ‘time-capsule scenario’ represents perfectly the worldly character of the film. Film is a living artifact of our past same way as ceramic pottery or other everyday stuff is for example. I understand that hard disks are very much physical objects too, but I don’t experience same with them and their digitally coded files. A 30 megabytes jpg-representation of Mona Lisa doesn’t substitute the real thing (and yes, I’m aware of philosophical way around this assumption, but it doesn’t satisfy me). And one could easily picture software that would create same kind of situation with help of cryptography, but it doesn’t have same feeling. Digital photography forms a different experience and while I like it better because of many reasons, I still have this persistent feeling of nostalgia when I have those rolls in my hand. Being physical and worldly, they provide feelings of comfort which virtual and untouchable files can never do (though the next best thing is to print your pictures to real paper).
Year of the Alpha – 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: www.yearofthealpha.com
Stored memories
Week 9, Wednesday
I’ve already told you that I have some old film in our fridge (see here), but what I didn’t tell you is that some of those rolls have pictures in them. Grown at the digital age I never clicked with an analog film, but there is one thing I’ve always liked about it – its physicality and worldly character. Image forms into a film with the aid of emulsion which contains light-sensitive chemicals. As such it is trace of physical reality and light that once run through the emulsion. Film rolls that are situated in our fridge contain these kind of traces from at least ten years back when me and Sari where younger and the life we now live didn’t yet exist. I didn’t develop these films because I wanted to preserve the images they contain for some unknown day in future, when we would develop them and find our past again. I think this kind of ‘time-capsule scenario’ represents perfectly the worldly character of the film. Film is a living artifact of our past same way as ceramic pottery or other everyday stuff is for example. I understand that hard disks are very much physical objects too, but I don’t experience same with them and their digitally coded files. A 30 megabytes jpg-representation of Mona Lisa doesn’t substitute the real thing (and yes, I’m aware of philosophical way around this assumption, but it doesn’t satisfy me). And one could easily picture software that would create same kind of situation with help of cryptography, but it doesn’t have same feeling. Digital photography forms a different experience and while I like it better because of many reasons, I still have this persistent feeling of nostalgia when I have those rolls in my hand. Being physical and worldly, they provide feelings of comfort which virtual and untouchable files can never do (though the next best thing is to print your pictures to real paper).
Year of the Alpha – 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: www.yearofthealpha.com