almost all of my photography these days happens on film. i first picked up the habit when i was maybe 17, about three years ago. circumstances changed but the medium endured. over the past few months, one by one, i have dragged my friends into this mildly inconvenient, mildly expensive hobby alongside me. art thrives as a communal project, a common good.
the driving force behind this obsession is not nostalgia. i do not wish for a simpler time. growing up in the late 2000s and 2010s, i'm more nostalgic for girlsgogames and getting groomed on kik than i've ever been for film. just because one concept has proximity to another, doesn't mean those concepts are interchangeable. i've never known peace and i don't yearn for it.
so, if not nostalgia, what's the point? undeniably, part of the contemporary appeal of film photography is that it is self-directed. it isn't mediated by untouchable third parties in the way internet-connected devices are. that's something i and many others value. besides that, many photography enthusiasts i've talked to have mentioned enjoying the slow pace of film, the short length of a roll and the necessary lapses of time between shooting, developing, and finally seeing. its a kind of slowness my generation is rarely afforded. these factors go some way towards explaining this particular phenomenon.
but for me, the primary appeal of film is not nostalgia for a time i wasn't even alive — all my baby pictures are digital — or the simple (though effective) pragmatism of physical media as a defence against the increasingly pervasive reach of tech companies, or even the respite it offers from the exhausting pace of today's world. my own fascination, at least, is more than a simple rejection of modernity. my prolonged affection for this particular medium is not purely reactionary purely. my explanation is simpler.
film photography is a clean intersection of imagery and tactility.
since i began dealing with depression at around 12, i've struggled with what burroughs offhandedly called image hunger: the indiscriminate craving for imagery, resulting from the loss of self-image. depression, like addiction, has a flattening effect on stimuli, both soothed and reinforced by an endless influx of imagery. what sickness is tiktok treating if not image hunger? what urge am i trying to satiate, watching youtube videos i've already seen? personally, you can tell things are really bad when i start downloading random visually stimulating mobile games.
image hunger seems to afflict a lot of people, usually under the name of "dopamine addiction" or "ruined attention spans". i find image hunger a useful term because it is less clinical, more experientally specific, and therefore more actionable. over time i've come to conclude that imagery is a legitimate human need. imagery is important. we have complex psychological mechanisms dedicated to the production and interpretation of imagery as a means of survival, communication, and for its own sake. the problem emerges when imagery is completely ambiguated from its relationship with other sensory experiences, for a prolonged period of time.
this principle seems to hold true along multiple axes of sensory experience. sometimes i feel a profound sense of disorientation when i walk from one building to another wearing noise-cancelling headphones. instinctually, a change in location is supposed to be indicated by a change in sonic environment. change in physical and visual conditions without the accompanying change in sound leads to a strange discomfort, almost a kind of numbness (i would be interested to hear how this differs for people with different sensory functions - feel free to share your thoughts in the guestbook).
our senses are connective tissue between ourselves and the world. they ground us. they keep us from becoming abstractions. often in my life i have felt that i am at risk of abstracting completely.
this has led me to seek healthier means of fulfilling my image hunger. i'm trying to reorient the voyeur in my head towards beneficial ends. it's imperfect, but i work with what i have. those eyes i feel watching when i'm alone ultimately belong to me. i want to live beautifully for the pleasure of my own gaze.
building my life back up, oriented towards this goal, has meant intentionally strengthening the tether between imagery and tactility. this may sound abstract but is in fact extremely material. think of it as a set of feedback loops. objects initiate outcomes which initiate meaning. my camera grounds me in a moment (tactility) while also allowing me to evoke that moment in the future (imagery). by the same principle, i carry a notebook and pen at all times and go out of my way to use them. i write ideas and to-do lists and get the people i meet to do little drawings in there, treasuring most the ones from people who insist they can't draw to save their life.
touch is causal in a way imagery often is not. for the most part, as far as the individual is concerned, imagery just is. an algorithm has no perceptible causality upon which we can exert influence, or to which we can be held accountable. tactile experience, on the other hand, necessarily requires that something be happening. wine spilled over the edge of a glass risks staining your clothes. flame slowly engulfs a cigarette, threatening to burn your fingers. sex comes with the risks of stis and (sometimes) pregnancy. eros is embodied. ancient greek symposia, as depicted in plato's symposium, at once revelled in the pleasures of the senses — food, wine, sex — and the pleasures of the intellect (howatson & sheffield ix). we are being systematically alienated from our senses. vapes, notes apps, sexting, the silent surreptitious phone camera, cheap, sweaty fabric that discourages dwelling in the body. i think it contributes to this feeling i have that everyone is far away from me, like they're on the other side of an oily sheet of cellophane. the beautiful, electric connection of shared sensory experience is hard to find when everyone is actively disassociating around me.
visual tactility describes a spectrum of visual stimuli that may evoke visual recognition of three-dimensionality at least, and a synaesthetic physical response at most (nansen & balanzategui 1558). the colour pink implies no tactility, as opposed to, say, the image of fur, wood grain, or something like a slime video, which implies a high level of tactility. visual tactility has played a part in the design of digital spaces since their inception, with the relationship between the two changing dramatically over time. my initial thought was that visual tactility has been disappearing, but it would maybe be more accurate to say we are moving towards the extremes. we go to apps for extreme sensory experiences, while the baseline level of visual tactility built into the digital spaces themselves has been reduced to almost nothing. the eradication of three-dimensionality is intentional.
'files', the 'recycling bin', the landline phone 'call' button, the floppy disc 'save' button, all remain basically universal and immovable symbols of the digital systems which aim to emulate them. testaments to the importance of the physical objects that have and will always lay at the root of the digital. yet the fact that we still use this type of imagery so consistently is more than just rusted-in industry convention. these symbols cannot be displaced because there is nothing to displace them. there is no new signifier of the call function to supplant the landline phone because there is nothing new that exists which is 1) fit to purpose and 2) visually distinct enough to be recognisable. the landline is such an effective signifier because of its sweeping, rounded shape, as iconic as it is wholly unique. the precise reason for this is that the landline takes the shape of the human body: the distance between an ear and a mouth, and between, a curved handle the size of a closed human fist. this cannot be said of the smartphone. i think you can feel this dissonance between the body and the object as you use it. by now we've all developed a complex system of instincts for how to handle this new appendage, but the form factor of the smartphone is kind of awkward in the human hand. smooth, flat, and overly dependent on the thumb. it is, for example, much more difficult to hold a smartphone between the head and shoulder to free up hands, especially if you're trying to do dishes or rifle through a bag (too small and slippery, and risks the touchscreen picking up on skin contact and accidentally hanging up).
i think tech companies hate that they are in this way still dependent on the physicality of that for which they have such distaste, like men who hate women but need sex. the systematic stripping of visual tactility has come to define the visual identity of the past decade or two of both software and hardware. constant visual flattening, the eradication of buttons and switches. user interfaces are sleek and sexless. physical devices are black, rectangular, and deliberately impenetrable. silicon valley pet projects like voice activated ai pins attempt to cut both imagery and tactility out of the equation almost entirely.
a few weeks ago, my best friend held my hand while i sat in a shopping cart in a carpark and cried for 45 minutes. between sobs i asked him if my makeup was okay or totally ruined. he took out my camera and told me to pose. i figured i probably looked as disgusting as i felt, but i trusted him. disgusting is often visually interesting, at least.
film photography is an exercise in aesthetic trust. we trust each other with the vulnerability of our own image. we trust each other's gaze. we trust the camera to capture it and we trust the developers to treat it with respect.
i'm not always good at making connections. film forces people meet me on my own terms. it asks something of them. it asks whether they're willing to trust me with just a sliver of themselves. i appreciate it every single time somebody puts their trust in me. i only hope i can make it worth their while.
2nd july 2025