Tacita Dean has been an advocate for film’s future in cinema. I love this long quote from her from a recent episode of the Kodakery. She’s talking about cinema, but it applies just as well to making still photographs.
"…for me it has to be this organic medium which is film. You know, it’s about time. It’s so much about time. It’s so much about the the movement in the frame. It’s so much about the the grain to some extent and so much also what I don’t know I’m going to get but then get. It’s the mystery. It’s the it’s the blindness. When I film something and then it goes off to be processed … there’s this forgetting that happens. You forget what you found to some extent. And then there’s this moment when you see it again. But the thing again, between the forgetting and the thing again, is this huge area of creative thinking that is quite difficult to explain without sounding crazy. But it’s a really important part of the whole thing is the lack of immediacy."
The quote continues in the podcast, and the entire interview is available in the very first episode of the Kodakery. She speaks poetically about the reasons she uses film.
I love her idea of the blindness built into film photography. It’s true for me as well. Rediscovering my negatives after a time away is so useful. She doesn’t mention it, but it requires maintaining an attitude of discovery throughout the entire process, from the moment of exposure to the production of the final print.
