A few weeks ago, while rifling through my laundry room for an object that has since escaped my memory, I came across an old camera bag. Lifting it gently off the shelf, I breathed in the soft smell of leather, curiosity washing over me as I examined my discovery. I brought the bag to my dad and we sat together as I zipped it open. Underneath a two-decade-old brochure for the Minnesota Children’s Museum and a hefty layer of dust laid my dad’s old camera. He had used this camera — a Nikon N75 — to capture the first two years of my life. While my early childhood has floated away from my memory, it was important to my father that he documented those moments. He wanted to preserve the beginnings of my life in photos, allowing him and my mom a portal to the past as they watched me grow up. One of the last times he must have used it was when we visited the Minnesota Children’s Museum when I was 2 years old, pictures of that memory residing in a photo album that I have flipped through numerous times.
The N75, which came out in February 2003 and was discontinued in January of 2006, is a film camera that uses 35 millimeter film to document whatever the photographer desires. In my very limited photography experience, I have only ever shot on digital cameras, so the prospect of taking photos on a film camera excited me to no end. The camera itself was in perfect condition, patiently waiting to be used again after years of sitting alone on a shelf. After purchasing film from my local photography store and learning how to load it, I was all set to begin a new chapter of my photography journey. My film has 36 photos on one roll, which means 36 opportunities to document my surroundings through my own perspective.
My summer crush on film photography soon developed. While I’ve always been a fan of digital photography, film photography is different. It feels exceedingly more personal than digital photography does. Film photography is deliberate. You cannot go back and delete photos, and the number of photos is limited by remaining film, so pressing the shutter button is an intentional action on your part. It signifies that you care about what you’re photographing and that you think it’s beautiful enough to permanently document.
When I was taking photos on my first roll of film, I did not want to waste any of those 36 images on scenes that didn’t deserve to be captured. But as I looked around me, scouting any chance to take a photo, I began to see beauty hidden in every corner of my environment. Before this camera, all I saw was a small Midwestern town — mundane and ordinary at its finest. Yet, when I looked at my surroundings through my film camera, I could see the abundant photography opportunities begging to be shot. There was beauty in the phone lines that criss crossed above my head, beauty in the rolling corn fields behind my house, beauty in the sunsets that bloomed in the sky after a long day under the hot sun. Within this beauty laid so many stories that I had never paid attention to until now. I saw the dedication the farmers in my town put into the corn and soybean crops they so meticulously planted, I saw families enjoying an evening out on the lake roasting marshmallows, I saw life and love all around me. My dad’s old film camera gave me a newfound appreciation for my town. It showed me that while places may seem uninteresting and ordinary, there is always something worth capturing. Maybe all you have to do is see it through a new lens.
Statement Columnist Ananya Gera can be reached at agera@umich.edu