When hiding a film camera in my crotch would have been so cool in today's film-obsessed community

Is my digital photography too plain and irrelevant?

Jul 16, 2023

Here’s a confession: building a community is a very long and arduous road. I recently mentioned to a coworker that I don’t really know how to build a team culture remotely. I’m not sure anyone has really figured it out. But if I’m being honest, I don’t think I’ve ever really mastered a digital community either, or at least the type of community that unabashedly interacts with each other, entirely devoid of judgment and consequence.

I say this because this newsletter already feels so much stronger than most of the social media communities I’ve tried to be a part of. This feels a bit more my pace; weekly updates to a small group of people that either comment or text me that they’ve spent six minutes with my words on a Sunday morning. Those interactions feel like earthquake-magnitude episodes of validation for me. It’s invaluable sentiment and the type of encounter I’m looking for.

David told me it would take a few of these to get a rhythm, but already I’m feeling the 35-foot three-pointer confidence of Steph Curry. So please anticipate some bricks in the near future.

Zack de la Rocha and Rage Against the Machine at the Great Western Forum for the Battle of Los Angeles tour. 2000.

Fun facts. We’re all full of them. The skill we developed at a young age or the famous people we’ve met. Maybe you have a twin or you’ve broken a lot of bones. Maybe your family once won the lottery (true story) or maybe you once went to 11 Rage Against the Machine shows in the span of 14 months (super true story).

My first concert was Pearl Jam in 1995 at the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles. X opened for them. I went with my early high school bestie Ambria, her mom and dad, and her brother. It was platonic: she was a raver and I was a dork interested in electronica, and her family were Deadheads who went to three shows a week. I thought they were the coolest. I’ve always stuck to a narrative pondering how a brown kid from the San Fernando Valley tapped into Seattle angst, but I think a lot of it came from hanging out at her house and listening to her brother listen to what I now believe was Berlin techno and Ambria bumping Sublime after Depeche Mode.

But, by that time, in the mid-90s, mainstream radio stations like KROQ were injecting grunge into teenagers’ brains like viral Tik Tok dances fuel the zeitgeist of today. What wasn’t unlikely is that a Mexican-American kid tapped into Marxist-rockers talking about stolen land; fusing sounds you’d really never heard together; and luring that kid with some of the most iconic imagery he’s ever seen. I can’t truly remember but I think the iconography of Rage Against the Machine started influencing my perspective somewhere around 1999 when I saw them at the first Coachella (old guy card).

A lot of these images – Zapatistas, Che, a red star, fist in the air guy – have stayed with me forever because their emblematic of maybe the only time I was truly part of a zeitgeist – the post-Chicano millennial straddling both class, patriotism, subculture, and definitions around what, exactly, we were.

A lot of this era was also exclusively captured in 35mm film for me. I had a Canon EOS 30 35mm film camera and, if I remember, mostly shot Kodak 200 and Ilford 400. But that’s fancy shit. My real passion at the time was point-and-shoot carelessness.

Did digital kill realness?

Do you know what I’ve realized on this revitalized photography journey I’m on? I’m not playing with the “cool tools” today. In fact, in the last half-decade, a revival of contact sheets and light leaks has gripped the photography community. I can’t scroll through Instagram without seeing some tribute to Portra 400 in the form of Joshua Tree images or sunflowers caressing a woman’s face or some sunkissed 50s Chevy. The bougie class shoot Portra 800 120 medium format because have you ever had a negroni on the Almafi coast on a 75-degree day? Neither have I but this film is the equivalent of that exquisiteness. Just look. How could you not want that?

Film’s revival is actually a tremendous comeback story and something I am truly excited for. Like vinyl, the idea of film is fueled by its tangible qualities and its tethering to a simpler, “more real” time. But something about the prevalence of film on social media, along with the natural irony of distributing film photography exclusively on screens, makes me think we’re on shaky ground with why a chemical process can endure over a math one. Color photography, for the most part, seems fairly easy if you scroll lots of behind-the-scenes Instagram stories, but it’s a fairly laborious process if you don’t have time. And that’s just the processing part. The printing part is even more intense. But I’m not so sure people even care about that part. They want “vintage” and for things to feel “more raw.” Or as one person said in this CBC article:

"You have to focus on the moment a lot closer to take that photo," they said. "Everything in the world is digital these days, and I needed something more concrete."

More concrete. Compared to what, exactly, I’m not sure. I’ve never found digital photography to be less of anything, aside from money in the long-term. Although I do think film photography helps slow things down, unless you’re rich. If you have the means, you’re just as likely to blast through film the way “The Dude” goes through white russians. But in the end, who gives a shit? What I think gets a little lost in this fairly trivial tussle between digital and film is the act of making overall. Pinhole or 100megapixel camera: doesn’t matter. You create to release an inner angel inside of you. Preach the high praise of the Portra priestess but just know that the digital heathens are creating beauty, too. And we’re not even talking about the iPhone people!

But what about that Rage Against the Machine stuff?

I warned you; I go on tangents.

The thing about film is that it sure does feel different. Remember that fun fact about the Rage shows? The detail I usually never highlight is that I took a lot of photos during that time with my sister’s old point-and-shoot 35mm camera. I’d stuff it down my pants and nestle between, well you know, and play it cool as patdowns were conducted. Never once was I caught and only once did I lose a roll of film. I’d quickly change rolls, typically hidden under a testicle (Sunday mornings are the best), and I’d go for 72 shots during a concert. Once I was able to sneak in three rolls but that’s the time I lost one. I got greedy.

Great Western Forum. Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium. Roxy. Coachella. Whatever the place is called in Sacramento. I took rolls and rolls and outsourced the development and printing. What developed were some of my most cherished personal possessions. And maybe that’s the path all of these film photographers are after. The one that leads directly to unmistakable love.

So, dear reader, I have a bit of a treat. Below are photographs that have never been seen on the internet. They are tucked away in a binder that looks like it was made on the side of the road in Tijuana. They are stored. They are safe. But during the pandemic, I got antsy and scanned a few with a very unsatisfactory scanner. So today you get to see those. And for anyone who ever tells you art and mediums have trends and popularity, just repeat Rage’s anthem: fuck you I won’t do what you tell me.

Happy Sunday. Turn some Rage on. And check this shit out.

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