At fifteen, I loaded a roll of film into
my Yashica for the first time. The weight
of the metal pressed against the softness
of my palm, and I remember the ritualistic
click of the canister settling into place. The
sound faded quickly—the small sound of a
door closing.
I had thirty-six frames. Thirty-six
memories to immortalise. It was an act
of preservation; what I chose to save,
and what time swallowed. Back then, I
pointed it towards anything—the light
filtering between the trees, the emptiness
between two tall buildings, the skyline mellowed by
grey clouds.
I held a frame in my eye and looked into the future; I
wondered, would it matter to look back?
Then, almost absent-mindedly, I waited for weeks
to reveal what I had sought. In the pause, anticipation
filled my days: a yearning to return, to adjust the angle,
to hold on to the final image. All I knew was this: it was
mine to keep.
I would wait, for days on end, and think—I wish
there were another way.
The screen of my iPhone camera glares brighter
than the sun. The colours are saturated, loud, and artificial—
eerily close to something real. Often, without
intention, I produce hundreds of images
a month that I will never look at again,
stored in a cloud somewhere, flattened
into a grid of thumbnails that I scroll
past without ceremony.
I admit it is convenient. The stench
of developer fluid does not linger.
My memories aren’t divided by
thirty-six.
This innovation promises
efficiency. It promises perfection.
The light is corrected,
the frame adjusted, and the
flaws quietly erased. There is a version of
the film camera for each of us. Quietly and
efficiently, the internet has taken from us
without ever asking permission. The digital
demolition is a great flattening. No photograph
costs anything to take, which means
no photograph costs you anything.
Every experience can be shared in real
time, which means the living of it and the
performance of it have collapsed into a single,
hollow gesture.
This is not new. The internet is increasingly
curated, manufactured, and unreal.
We’re tourists in a strange city, burdened by the grief of
abundance without any weight.
Our attention has become currency—shaped, directed,
and held a moment longer than we intend.
We have been nudged, over time, to fill every silence.
To reach for our phones at every lull in the
conversation. It takes something quieter from us: our
tolerance for slowness, our capacity to wait, and our
resistance. These are not trivial losses. They alter how
we experience being alive.
The radical act, today, is to slow down.
Some of us are returning to tangible rituals as a form
of resistance. We are, in small ways, choosing friction
again.
To use a film camera is to commit. You seek it out,
carry it home, and load the film. You cannot edit a flaw.
You are, by design, in a relationship with the thing
you chose. It matters. The inconvenience is not a bug
waiting to be fixed.
For too long, we’ve been sold a myth; the destination
as performance. The analogue revival is a
reminder that the means matter as much as the
end. The journey forms us. The process builds
us. The resistance makes us.
This reclamation is not a Luddite gesture—
choose your ritual: your favourite tune, a
specific time, a cherished chair. They are quiet decisions about how you spend your most finite
resource—your attention.
This is the drag path. A deliberate slowing, a chosen
friction—the evidence that you are.
I have been thinking about loading a camera again.
Not because I want to be fifteen, or that film is better,
but because I want the ritual of something ordinary—
the learning curve, the drag path.
That is what people are reaching for when they buy
a book they could download in seconds. Not the object
itself, but the weight of their own choosing. The proof.
In a culture of infinite, weightless content, that
weight feels radical. It is not an aesthetic preference. It
is a way of being alive in the world that insists on presence—
on the before and the after, the ritual and the
residue, the thirty-six frames you were given, and how
you decided to spend them.