Developing old rolls of film during a pandemic is like digging up buried treasure. It is a gift from the past. A reminder that normality is relative and not guaranteed.
I have never developed my own film, but I imagine the feeling is like returning from the lab and unpacking the photos, the wonder of images materializing in chemical baths akin to the joy of removing smooth prints from their flimsy paper envelope for the first time.
There is a heft to the photos that always unnerves and pleases me. A stranger has rendered my memories into tactile objects — into permanence. I opt for a lustrous finish as opposed to gloss. I prefer the way my finger glides across the surface and the way the light bounces off — minimally. The less it reflects, the easier it is to pretend the barrier between present and past doesn’t exist.
My shots of O’ahu from 2019 have deep contrast and more saturation than I expect. I wonder if my Nikon EM is changing the way I remember things, or if the golden hour was really that dramatic, if the sun was generous that afternoon. It feels like it has been decades since I let shave ice melt in my mouth, syrup coating my lips, or inhaled gardenia and jasmine gently scenting the wind, or felt the damp, humid air soften my skin. But if I cannot visit now, seeing O’ahu as I saw it last year and reliving those days on film is the next best thing.Â
This analog camera I use — once my mother’s — has accompanied me to O’ahu on countless trips. Though I was not born there, I have been to Hawai’i with my mother so many times that the memories of her homeland have become my memories. Echoes of her college days reverberate through time and space when we walk across the University of Hawai’i Manoa campus. We drive the streets she drove as a teenager. We eat the food she ate as a child. Until it was demolished, we stayed in the family house, the one that had been with us for generations. The places my mother loves are now places I love. It is home. A home I’ve enjoyed sporadically throughout my life, but home nonetheless.
Next time — because there will be a next time — I will photograph my family and random passers-by, immortalizing the way they move and interact and live. I will capture the tall buildings and fragrant trees and art I see in museums, but I will be bold. I will ask questions, ask the proprietors of old, struggling businesses for a portrait, ask young couples if they wouldn’t mind stopping for a moment.
I won’t let the everyday details escape. I don’t know how long they will be there. And once I’m there, who knows how long it will be before I can go back?
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