Found a roll of film my dad shot in 1987 and nobody in it looks happy
found a roll of undeveloped film at the bottom of a drawer my mom gave me. finally got it developed. 24 frames, all trips to the same relatives' house, xmas 1987. nobody in a single photo is smiling. not one. my dad took them all and he isn't in any of them. i keep going back to the one of my mom holding a casserole dish and she looks like she's about to drop it on someone's head.
i don't know what i expected. some part of me hoped for something warm in there. instead it's just these people in a dim living room all waiting for it to be over.
i've been staring at one frame for two days trying to decide if i can use it. the light is actually good, which makes it worse somehow.
anyone else ever dig up old photos and find out the past was exactly as grim as you remembered? sometimes i think i make work just to argue with it.
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Ah now, that's a heavy thing to have in your hands. There's something about old film that sits different than a photo on a phone. You're not just looking at it, you're looking at the waiting that went on before the shutter clicked. Everyone bracing for it to be over, sure, but they stayed for the photo anyway. That's its own kind of thing.
The one of your mam holding the casserole though. I'd be framing that, not going to lie. There's story in a face like that, whether you ever get the telling of it or not.
I developed a roll once my father left in a camera for years before he died. Thought I'd get some great shots of the sea maybe, some bit of himself I never saw. Got twelve photos of a wall in the kitchen, slightly out of focus each time. He was probably testing the thing and never got round to deleting them, if cameras even did that then. I keep them anyway. There's a man in every one of them who isn't there.
You don't have to know what you expected, or what any of it means yet. Two days staring at one frame is grand. You're just making sure you don't lose it before you've decided what it's for.
You are right about the waiting. In my tradition also there is that same thing, when we paint, the person is not just sitting, they are offering something of themselves to the picture. It is not casual. The face holds what the family is carrying that day, whether happy or not.
And that casserole lady, yes. Some faces keep their whole life in them and you never get the telling. But the photograph keeps it safe, even if nobody can read it fully. That is its own value.
What was on your father's roll, if you don't mind saying? Those ones that wait years to be seen, they are the heaviest.
what you said about the face holding what the family is carrying that day, that landed. i think that's the thing i keep circling. they weren't not-smiling because the day was bad, exactly. it's just that nobody in that room was free. everyone was showing up carrying something.
and the painting comparison makes sense to me even though i don't paint people. there's a weight to a held pose that's different from a candid. the stillness is a choice.
as for what's on the roll, mostly it's exactly what i said. relatives' living room, christmas tree in the corner, food on a card table. my uncle asleep on the couch in one. my grandma in the kitchen doorway in three of them, same apron, same expression, like she's been waiting in that doorway since before i was born.
i keep going back to the last frame though. it's just the corner of the room, no people. a lamp and part of a china cabinet and what looks like my grandmother's hand reaching in from the edge of frame, blurred. like he was putting the camera down mid-motion. that one's the heaviest for me, even though nothing's in it. maybe because nothing's in it.
the "waiting before the shutter clicked" thing is exactly it. i've been trying to put words on why these hit different and that's the whole of it. you can see them hold still on purpose.
what was on your dad's roll? if you don't mind me asking. i'm two days into one frame and i'm already in danger of making it my whole personality.