Darkroom Shadows by Jacob Thomason
For a 14 to 18-year-old, high school is generally seen as either the most chaotic or most boring seven hours of each day, which makes Monday through Friday seem like a jumble of events that flow into one another. When it's time to graduate, start a career, build a family, and grow old, people reflect on the moments when they saw all their friends every day, maybe even their favorite teacher or class they took. For me, this was a film photography class. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, I would walk into Ms. Pickell’s Photography class throughout my sophomore, junior, and senior years, loading film into my Canon Rebel G and brainstorming ideas for the 25 shots I was tasked with capturing. Almost every person who has seen me with the camera in hand, tweaking each specific setting to get the perfect image, has said something along the lines of: “What’s the point of using that old camera if I can just take a photo with my phone?” Although I can use my phone to capture a photo or video of something and see the results quickly, it defeats the purpose of the camera in today’s world. That purpose is the special connection between the photographer, the image, and the camera, which is created by what I like to call the “photographic web”.
The “photographic web” begins with the camera, which is the medium used to create, showcase, and preserve the world around us through photographs. The first camera that created permanent images was invented in 1826 by Nicéphore Niépce. He used a light-activated pewter plate and a natural phenomenon called Camera Obscura, in which light passes through a dark space via a small opening, creating an inverted, reversed, and live image onto the surface. Niécpe’s camera had many flaws, mainly due to the painfully long process it took to generate the image. Just over ten years later, the daguerrotype camera was invented by Louis Daguerre. His camera used a silver iodide copper sheet that needed to be activated with hot mercury for the photograph to appear, and locked the exposure with a salt solution. In the late 19th century, roll film was introduced. Created by George Eastman, it replaced the fragile and inefficient plates with flexible celluloid. This led to the creation of what we know as the 35mm film camera. Using the celluloid film, the user inserts the film canister into the camera, which exposes the film negative with the light, aperture, and lens type with each shutter click. Kickstarting the popularization, Leica cameras transitioned photography from an art form exclusive to the elite and mass-produced the camera for the common people. These cameras were used for photojournalism, capturing historical moments such as the Great Depression and the Vietnam War. “Photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson used the Leica for the decisive moment - those fleeting moments that depict a story in a single image. The way he captured historical perspectives with a Leica set the trend that documentary photography still follows today.” (Oberwerth). Without the historical use of cameras, we wouldn’t have the reason to record events with these devices.
Over the next two centuries, technological advancements led cameras to evolve into a more convenient form of media, transitioning from film-based cameras to instant prints with Polaroids, and eventually digital photos captured right from a phone. The convenience of a smartphone makes film photography look useless and complicated from the outside. The reason people around the world still take photos with these cameras can give us insight as to why its resurgence is gaining popularity, and the photographic web wouldn’t be complete without a photographer. Photography darkrooms around the United States and around the world have seen a revival, most significantly in classrooms. Around the world, young people view film photography as an inspiring and rooted ritual involving the camera and the developing process itself. The procedure isn’t finished when the roll runs out, and can last days when developing the film roll, deciding which images to print, and developing the print onto photo paper, making it all worthwhile. Constructing the image into something tangible, even with its imperfections, can prove more valuable than pixels on a screen. Aidan Ruiz, a finance major who discovered and took a liking to film photography at Arizona State University, says, “Film photography is the rawest form of photography. I think the way that you really learn how a sensor on a digital camera works is by starting with film” (State Press Magazine). In a technological world, film photography proves to represent authenticity and connection with physical art.
For thousands of years, humans have expressed their feelings and history through art: paintings, sculpture, illustration, literature, and, of course, photography. Film photography helps keep memories alive and tangible. Big milestones like birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries are now things we can look back on not only through our minds, but on a piece of paper. Mari Makarov, photojournalist at Medium, discusses how even though photography has evolved past film, it has created a stylistic interest: “Our nostalgia has become an aesthetic. Part of the appeal is that film grain gives off that vintage vibe that feels timeless.” (Storm & Shelter). The uniqueness of each photo and camera helps bring out the personality in each image: the grain, light leaks, and scratches on film show the quality of the image and humanize the process of taking photos, whereas digitally, it always results in a “picture-perfect” image. With the modernization of photography in different cultures, 24-hour photo labs have declined. With a resurgence, the handful of remaining labs have seen an increase in business. The photographic process isn’t automatic and requires the photographer to play an active role in the darkroom, which is one of the only art forms to include this format. The darkroom is part of the “sacred ritual” that is film photography, and has changed the way society cherishes the result of film photography. Not only has society been affected by the physical, but the shared experiences of developing images have established photography communities. Online spaces like TikTok, Facebook Groups, and Instagram have brought together like-minded individuals who want to share their work, discuss new advancements, and recommend new cameras/lenses/film types. Social media has enabled these people to connect across borders, where it may be challenging to find others with the same passion. More locally, photography clubs are common to find across college campuses and through meetups. Culture has shifted into bonding over these moments, sharing the photos resulting from these events through photographic prints.
At the end of my senior year of high school, our last photography prompt was “candid”. Previously, prompts were based on types of art, location, and people. It was never something like this. I took it upon myself to bring my camera everywhere I went, from hanging out with friends and having family dinners to solo trips. While developing these photos, I started to realize why Ms. Pickell assigned us this prompt. It wasn’t just about taking an aesthetically pleasing photograph, but also about capturing the moments in our lives and immortalizing them. During our photo critiques, where the class would share photos and what led everyone to create them, a wide range of photos were displayed: friends having a good time, animals in nature completely unaware they were being recorded, and even selfies. I realized that the 20-25 kids in my class all shared the same passion as I: capturing what is perceived as small moments in our minds through our cameras, printing them out, and amplifying the moment to look back on. Sharing that mission is what all photographers strive to do, and film photography enhances it through the photographic web and the aesthetic design of film.
I give film photography five out of five stars.
Works Cited
Capture. “The Timeline of Evolution of the Camera from the 1600s to 21st Century.” Capture, 26 Mar. 2025, www.capture.com/blogs/insights/evolution-of-the-camera. Accessed 15 Sept. 2025.
Makarov, Mari. “The Importance of Film Grain.” Storm & Shelter, 12 July 2019, medium.com/storm-shelter/the-importance-of-film-grain-255f0246cd64. Accessed 15 Sept. 2025.
Mesquita, Leah. “In Focus: The Resurgence of Film in the Digital Age.” State Press Magazine, 4 Apr. 2024, www.statepress.com/article/2024/04/magazine-film-photography-resurgence. Accessed 15 Sept. 2025.
Oberwerth Blog. “The Importance of Leica in Historical Documentary Photography.” Oberwerth, 8 Apr. 2025, oberwerth.com/en-us/blogs/fotowissen/the-importance-of-leica-in-historical-documentary-photography?srsltid=AfmBOoqKxkiC81uMQqRhERGSKXebhqCTI0UoeTs7n1kfBetlCPKfEIUd. Accessed 15 Sept. 2025.