It’s easy to think that anyone and everyone can be a photographer now. With the ease of snapping photos on your phone camera and the jump in quality on iPhone images and photo editing over the years, taking good photos is more accessible than ever. But just like vinyl records, print media, and menus without QR codes, there’s always going to be a market for more touchy-feeling, analog art forms where you have to learn the craft and take your time. Film photography has been making a comeback in recent years, and though it can seem intimidating, there are a number of photographers and photo labs in Pittsburgh who’ve embraced it.
Photographer George Lange (who’s photographed for Vanity Fair, GQ, and was a protegé of Annie Leibowitz) mostly shoots on digital cameras, but believes that using film or really focusing on the printmaking process has benefits that anyone can enjoy. “Any of these processes force you to slow down,” Lange said. “They force you to look at a single image. Film forces you to take only the 12 images you have. And shooting film is a tactile process, focusing on a single thing and on the artwork. Anything that gets us to slow down and focus is good.”
Pittsburgh Photo Labs Encourage Film Photography Renaissance
Beside Tina’s cocktail bar on Penn and Main, Bodega Film Lab is one of Pittsburgh’s premier destinations for analog photography education. Owner Pat Bruener offers C-41 color and black and white film processing, scanning services, printing, VHS to digital conversions, and art photography services.
“We also host photo walks, photography shows, and other local film community events at the lab,” Bruener said. “Shooting film and using analog cameras offers a unique and tactile experience that digital, or iPhones these days, can’t replicate. Each frame encourages mindfulness and intentionality, turning photography into a more thoughtful art form.” Bruener also looks to the aesthetic qualities of film, grain, textures, dynamic color range, and warmth in images, all of which are hard to achieve digitally.
“The process of developing film at home or in a lab is a deeper connection to the medium and the craft that people can explore. There’s infinite knowledge to learn about cameras and film which is another reason that makes it special. It’s a never-ending love-hate story,” Bruner said.
A quick glance through Bodega’s Instagram shows some of the photos Bruener and his customers take—a vanity plate reading EW AS IF, a gaggle of United Steelworkers union members tailgating by the UPMC building, or laughing friends at a dinner party. Small intimacies stick out more in film, like the glowing flares of a nighttime cigarette, the detail of a back tattoo, or the ephemerality of a smile.
A Way to Cherish Memories in “Beautiful Chaos”
Sean Masuda, a local who works at Apteka and developed (pun intended) an interest in film photography, processes his film at Bodega and has digitized it. “There’s obviously the vintage aesthetic that you get from using film cameras that makes it so fun to look at film photography, but, personally, the process of shooting a roll of film is the most charming aspect of it for me,” he told TABLE.
Like Lange, Masuda enjoys the fact that film lets him slow down. “I enjoy not being able to know how the pictures I just took are going to turn out. It forces me to adopt an attitude that is antithetical to any perfectionist tendencies that I would have if I were to be shooting with a digital camera. There’s a beautiful chaos in the not-knowing and it’s always so exciting to see how a roll of film turns out. I tend to use photography as a means of documenting the moments that I would like to remember. So, getting to see what’s on each roll serves somewhat as a little recap of all the fun things I’ve been up to recently.”
If you, like so many of us, need to slow down and find more appreciation of the day-to-day, stop into Bodega and chat with some of the people that have fallen in love with this medium.
Story by Emma Riva / Photo courtesy of Bodega Film Lab
Subscribe to TABLE Magazine‘s print edition.