The thing that I love most about shooting expired film is the way that it enhances my already considerable natural talent. No other medium, be it digital photography, paint or charcoal, Spirograph or Bedazzler, allows me to truly express myself the way that expired film does. Yesterday I experienced the ultimate form of expired film – expired Polaroid film.
It happened this way – I bought four rolls of expired 35mm film on eBay for the low price of $420, and when the package arrived, it contained something extra. A strange, square box, a pack of Polaroid 600 film with an expiration date stamped on the bottom: July, 2005.
How did something so old survive and find its way to me? The universe made it so.
My Polaroid camera is called the One Step 2. While I love this camera, it’s hard to ignore the ways it limits my otherwise boundless creativity. This camera has no double exposure mode, no aperture control, no way to darkroom print or make cyanotypes, no way to add medium format-style film negative borders or to instantly convert my shots to video and post them to TikTok. Even worse than these limitations, the instant film it uses can’t be pushed.
I always push my film.
Always.
I consider the act of pushing film to be art itself, you understand.
Still, despite the limitations I persevered, knowing in my heart that I had the ability (the obligation) to coax the dormant masterworks from out the ten white-bordered square frames contained within my expired pack of Polaroid 600 film. I had only but to frame, and shoot, and art would be freed.
I sweated and cursed and gnashed my teeth and shot my shot, and seventy-two sleepless hours later, my photos had been made. The art had been made. And though I had at first bemoaned the limitations of the camera, I retrospectively believe that the camera’s limitations have in fact pushed my craft toward transcendence.
The ten photos that I made with my pack of expired Polaroid film are among the greatest photographs I have ever made. Perhaps greater than any that anyone has ever made.
Let me describe them, their creation, and their importance.
My first photo was of my firstborn daughter. She being the inspiration for so many things in my life, I found it fitting that she be the subject of the first of my ten masterpieces. She would be immortalized in my art. The greatest gift a father could give.
The photo is deceptively simple. She stands aside the window in my living room. The light cascades through the gossamer-thin curtains, bathing one side of her face in sunlight while leaving the other half enigmatically shrouded in shadow. Her gentle smile only hints at happiness. The sun, bathing only half of her face, reminds us that true happiness is unattainable. That even at our lightest moments, there is inevitable darkness. Who knew that such a powerful image could be made with just a window and a pack of Polaroid film?
Me.
I knew.
Beyond the photo’s sophisticated conceptual overtone, it is rich with aesthetically pleasing qualities. Among the most striking of its visual bounty is its exceptional tones. Much is said about “tones” in the film photography community. Those who have mastered creating a tone are lauded, and rightly so. In my photo, we see something even more.
Not only is the entire right hand side of the frame a tone in and of itself, but the left hand side, paradoxically shows an entirely. Different. Tone.
Notice the way that the tones juxtapose one another, while also allowing each to speak for itself, individually, on its own, singularly, as one. Having just one tone in this photo would have been enough. I have made a photo with two tones. This was not easy to pull off, especially considering the aforementioned limitations of both the expired Polaroid film and the rather hamstrung Polaroid camera which was used to make the photograph.
The way that I managed to create these two contrary yet complementary tones within a single photograph is very difficult to explain. The complexities of the tones and the mechanisms needed to make them are sadly beyond many casual photographers. At the least, they are too complicated to explain with a single written language.
I know that this is a let-down, that many of you are here specifically to understand how I create my art so that you may grow yourselves as artists. A noble pursuit, made even nobler when we consider that the heights of talent held in these pages can be reached by so few.
The best that I can do for now, is to advertise that I’m currently outlining a one-on-one mentorship program. In this program, conducted via text message, I will personally instruct you on how to create tones. Pricing has yet to be determined, but we’d like the course to be available to everyone – cost will fall between $999 and $1,500 per fifteen-minute block of text messaging. More on this in the coming months.
Lest you think for a moment that I am but a one-hit wonder, capable of creating only a single masterpiece out of a ten shot pack, I would draw attention to eight of the remaining nine photographs.
You’ll notice that I’ve made amazing photos of many subjects, the variety of which showcases my range as an artist. See these shots below – a gas station, a mailbox, one corner of an old car’s headlight, an intentionally over-flashed portrait, bokeh, and one of my personal favorites, a shopping cart. (Please don’t screenshot these – I am planning to sell them as NFTs.)
Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that that I’ve only included nine of my photos in this article.
There’s a reason for the missing photo.
The tenth and final photograph of the pack could not be included in this article. When it was ejected from the camera, a strange thing happened. I don’t know how to explain it.
I heard the sound of harps, an organ, a choir. A white light surrounded me, engulfed me, became me. The tenth photograph held in my hand seemed to float from my palm, to hover in air for just a moment before it folded into itself in what can only be described as an iridescent collapse, an imploding bloom of light. I had made an infinity photograph. All sound ceased. The photograph diminished to a single, brilliant point of light – and simply vanished.
Where that photo has gone I may only guess.
But there’s a light living within me now. I can feel it. I have become something more, something pure. I feel that I am now above the term “artist.”
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Your artistic gift is so great that it cannot be confined to just expired film as its medium; it undisputedly overflows into the realm of satire.