In the digital age, where advancements in camera technology and photo editing allow people to take professional-quality pictures on their phones, some are looking to the past for new inspiration.

Film was for many decades the preeminent medium for photographers. However, with the evolution and proliferation of digital cameras in the 21st century, the film medium dwindled in significance with many manufacturers discontinuing their film-based products.

And yet, despite becoming an endangered species, so to speak, the late 2010s saw a renewed interest in film photography, surging during the COVID-19 pandemic when people sought new hobbies while in isolation, according to a report by Marketplace.

Tori Fyfe, a Chattanooga film photographer, who opened the community film development lab, Safelight District, in 2019, says she has seen an uptick in business since the pandemic began in 2020.

Safelight District is a community darkroom, open 24/7 to anyone with darkroom experience. There is a one-time fee to use the space, which can be reserved online to ensure it’s not overbooked. And first-timers are given a quick overview before use.

    Staff photo by Olivia Ross / Tori Fyfe cuts negatives.
  

“A lot of people were looking for a hobby during the pandemic,” Fyfe says. “Or maybe [film photography] was something that they had put on the shelf and wanted to get back to eventually, and the pandemic kind of gave them an opportunity to do that.”

Fyfe says younger people are drawn to film photography because they can achieve a unique look with their photos without the need for social media filters. She also credits the delayed gratification of receiving the developed photos as a quality that makes film photography special.

“When I develop the film, I see those memories come back,” Fyfe says. “But with the phone, I’m just like, ‘What’s this for?’ [The photos are] just going into the abyss of the rest of my camera photos on my phone.”

Film photographers say one of the medium’s biggest draws is the photo-taking process. They enjoy slowing down to explore their surroundings and look at the world around them in new ways, exposing each frame on their roll of film with intention rather than with the reckless abandon they’ve become accustomed to with digital photography.

Reed Darden, 30, who recently moved to Chattanooga, took up film photography within the past year. The film photography process has provided him with a much-needed respite from all the technology that surrounds him in everyday life.

    Staff photo by Olivia Ross / Vintage cameras sit on a shelf at Safelight District.
  

“I just wanted to pick up a hobby where I could kind of disconnect a little bit [from being on the phone and computer],” Darden says. “I thought about photography, and that’s what kind of drew me to doing film instead of … digital.”

Additionally, Darden says film photography has helped him see more of the city he now calls home.

“[Film photography has] gotten me to go out and explore a little bit,” Darden says. “Chattanooga is such a beautiful city; there are so many great spots that you can take pictures of.”

With increased interest in film photography comes increased demand, but limited supplies have led to price hikes in recent years on cameras and film, according to Marketplace. To combat increased prices, Fyfe suggests starting out small by buying cheaper film like the kinds made by Fujifilm and looking for affordable cameras in antique stores or on websites like eBay.

Chattanoogans looking to get involved in the city’s film photography community can connect with Safelight District via their website, safelightdistrict.com, or social media, @safelightdistrict.

    Staff photo by Olivia Ross / Tori Fyfe cuts negatives.
  

EASTON, Pa. — Angel Sanchez and his friends smiled proudly Wednesday as they pointed at a large photo hung on a chain link fence.

The four buddies are among 12 middle school students who participated in an after-school photography class at Easton Area Community Center.

The young students attended the unveiling of their project, a photo exhibit called “Inside Outside World” at West Ward Market, between 12th and Northampton Streets.

• The Inside Outside World project at Easton’s West Ward Market features hundreds of photos taken by young photographers
• The photos will be on display through September
• Shoppers at the West Ward Market donated to those displaced by Monday’s fire on Ferry Street

Joining them at the unveiling were Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr., and Lisa Campbell, director of Easton Area Community Center.
The photo exhibit will be on display every Wednesday until September.

During the three-week class, the Easton-area students were taught about the history of portrait photography to inspire their own portraits and self portraits while learning techniques of composition, staging, lighting and color.

“I learned a lot like how to use cameras the old way,” Angel, 11, said. “It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed participating in the class.”

The workshop was taught by Ghen Dennis, founder of Overtown Media + Arts in Easton.

Dennis, who handed photography books to the youngsters as a gift at the event, volunteered her time and shared some of the printing costs for the project.

She said her goal was to show the students what it was like to take photos pre-digital times.

“They experimented with black-and-white Polaroid film and some of them had the idea to include the Polaroids in their [finished] shot,” she said.

“For a lot of young people, photographs aren’t material things. They get traded digitally. Thinking about having a tactile object, I think surprised them.”

The project also was funded by the West Ward Community initiative.

‘All in this together’

The unveiling of the students’ banners brought some happiness days as the neighborhood, between Sixth and 15th streets, is rallying together after a fire Monday that destroyed a dozen homes on the 900 block of Ferry Street and displaced 61 residents.

On Wednesday afternoon, residents were seen dropping off bags of non-perishable food and gently used clothing. One unidentified donor gave $450 in gift cards.

“It was all increments of $50, so that will help six families,” said Tanya Ruiz, manager of the West Ward Community Initiative, who lives a block away from the fire site.

As she sorted through donations Wednesday, Ruiz said she watched as her neighborhood was engulfed in flames on Memorial Day.

”It is so sad that this happened, but there’s a lot of people helping out,” she said. “People are coming together and giving back.”

The clothing collected Wednesday will be distributed at an event held in the next few weeks at Paxinosa Elememtary School.

Charitable organizations such as the American Red Cross Pennsylvania Rivers Chapter, the Third Street Alliance, West Ward WISE and local church groups also are assisting those in need.

A ‘berry’ good day

Attendees at the exhibit listened to tunes by Scott Harrington, a local singer-guitarist, while celebrating “Strawberry Day” at the West Ward Market.

The market features dozens of locally sourced vendors selling fruit, vegetables, flowers, fresh eggs, baked breads, cookies and pastries, jams, honey and condiments.

It was founded in 2022 by the GEDP as part of a collaboration to expand access healthy food for residents throughout the Valley.

Shoppers can pay for goods with cash, credit or debit cards and EBT.

It is open 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays through September.

By Jorge Fuentelsaz

New York, May 31 (EFE).- The intoxicating passion of a new relationship, betrayal, narcissistic love, violence, intimacy, politics, sex and devotion through illness and past death are some of the themes captured in photographs by 16 international artists which will be on display beginning Friday at New York’s International Center of Photography Museum (ICP).

“Love Songs, Photography and Intimacy” is the name of this exhibition conceived of as an old “cassette” on which songs were compiled as a present for a friend, relative or lover, exhibition curator Sara Raza told EFE.

She said she envisioned the exhibit as a way to rethink different kinds of relationships, and what that really means, thereby moving beyond the romantic version of how we think about love and intimacy.

Raza explained that, in putting together the exhibition, she was also interested in including and exploring different ways of recording, whether it be global, local, digital or analog.

Among the works on display, Raza emphasized that of US photographer Clifford Prince King, one of whose photos is on the cover of the exhibition’s catalog showing two young men seated on a grassy hill in the country and embracing.

It’s a photograph full of color that plays with the public, with LGBT love, with privacy, what is noticed and what is hidden, the urban world and rural spaces.

Also standing out among the photos in the exhibit are shots by Japan’s Nobuyoshi Araki, a series that dates back to 1971 and is made up of photos of his honeymoon with his wife Yoko Aoki. On the opposite wall is another of Araki’s photo series from 1989-1990 documenting Aoki’s illness and death.

The heartbreaking and violent love of US photographer Nan Goldin has also earned a place in the exhibit, which was put on display for the first time at the Maison Euopeenne de la Photographie (MEP) in Paris.

For this show, however, Raza has added five new artists to give it a more American accent and include a new layer – namely one “beyond romantic love” that is more political and more international.

The sad, naked look of Angel Zinovieff, the partner of photographer Collier Schorr, is also included in the extensive catalog, where works dating back to the 1950s are combined with more recent photos.

That’s the case with Franco-Dominican photographer Karla Hiraldo Voleau, who in her 2022 work “Another Love Story” presents a hybrid viewpoint between photography and narrative, where her own real-life experience is mingled with fiction.

In several photo panels, Hiraldo presents photos of her year-long romantic relationship with a former partner: trips, visits to the beach and taking baths together, chats at home and in bars, intimate moments in their room. These images all depict a happy relationship full of love, as recorded on Instagram.

And yet, between each group of Hiraldo’s photos a telephone conversation is interspersed in which the artist and another girl simultaneously discover that they are sharing the same lover without knowing it.

It’s a very tragic love story, Hiraldo told EFE, about how she found out that her ex-partner simultaneously had a life with another woman.

These are real photos, although the face of her “ex” is not seen, with snapshots that reproduce real moments where the person shown is an actor paid by Hiraldo and not, in fact, her former lover, with whom she shared an apartment for a year.

“It’s an auto-fiction,” she said, adding that she loves putting herself in between reality and fiction, erasing the border between what’s real and what is not, because, especially, in this project, “I didn’t know (the difference) either.”

Hiraldo’s work, and that of the other photographers, seeks to capture the complexities, elusiveness and subjectivity of love – Raza said – along with its inability to be quantified, its chemistry and incompleteness, the absence of some of its frequencies, just like the songs that are not included on those cassette tapes we made for others.

EFE

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The work of local photographer Diane Beatty opens today in the Thomases Family Endowment of the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation Art Gallery.

“Color vs. Black and White” will feature a few of her favorite photos, some in color, some in black and white and a few featuring both.

Beatty studied art at Youngstown State University in the 1980s, but her journey into photography didn’t begin until April 2014, when she felt compelled to photograph the demolition of General Electric on Hughes Street in Youngstown. That same year, she created a Facebook group called Youngstown Photography Group where she met other photographers that helped her learn and grow as an artist.

Since then, she has won many awards in local art shows and has been featured in the Regional Photography exhibit at the Butler institute of American Art.

According to Beatty, “You may wonder why I prefer to show a photo in black and white versus color. There are a couple factors. If the image is strong, sometimes color can be distracting. My eye is drawn to red, for example, so if it takes away from the composition, I will see how the photo looks in black and white. The other factor is if the sky is blown out. I don’t like to shoot on a sunny day, because of this. When I first started to exhibit my work, one of my YSU professors asked to see my work. After seeing it he asked, ‘Where is the color?’ The photos were all black and white. Since then, no matter where I go to photograph, I ask myself that question and specifically look for a colorful image.”

Beatty primarily is interested in historical and abandoned sites, relishing the challenge of capturing images in low light and composing unique photographs that tell a story.

Her work will on display through July 30 at the gallery, located inside the Jewish Community Center of Youngstown, 505 Gypsy Lane. A reception with the artist is scheduled from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday.