It will be Halloween soon and yesterday there was
the Fall Arts show downtown. It was time
for my 1979 Mamiya 645 1000s to get some exercise hanging from my neck while
walking around.
I came across a re-enactment of how Prescott was in
the 1800s, and decided to take a few photos.
After I clicked once, a young man came to me curious
about my camera.
“That is an antique!” he started, “and I could hear
the shutter from 20 feet away.”
“It is the large mirror falling,” I said “yes, old
medium format cameras are not made for photo taking during a piano concerto.”
“My Nikon is mirrorless,” he proudly continued, “It
is the latest technology.”
I slowly winded the film turning the noisy winding
crank.
“And it has a crank?!”
“It does, just like cars had in the 1920s” I said in
a serious tone.
“So, you use film, an antique camera with a crank,
and try to focus through a waist screen. Tell me, why?”
“I suppose for the same reason some people still
enjoy driving and repairing vintage cars – for the companionship between tool
and user.”
He started laughing and I noticed he had perfect
teeth.
“Do you drive a vintage car?”
“Well, mine will qualify as vintage in 4 years and I
will get a plate that says so” I responded.
At this point he was keen on seeing my photos.
“Can I find you on Facebook? Instagram? Snapchat?”
“Tell you what, you will not find me on any of these
sites. But I will give you the link too my blog – check it out after a couple
of days, since it will take me that long to develop the film, hang it to dry,
then use my 1950s enlarger in the darkroom to print photos, hang them to dry,
then scan them so I can post on my blog.”
“And now a blog!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I will check.”
After he left, I wondered what my antique camera can
do that his mirrorless wonder cannot. As I was in thought, my eyes fell upon
the “MULTI” switch on the right of the camera body. That is for taking multiple
exposures on the same film frame. I had used it once decades ago just to try it
and the photos I got were not for street photography. Maybe for creative landscape
shots, but not for capturing events in the streets.
I had no idea if modern digital cameras can take
multiple exposures on the sensor they harbor. But I decided to try it on film.
… The photo at the outset is a double exposure – I switched
the lever to “MULTI” took one shot, cocked the shutter via the crank which now
did not advance the film, and took another shot a few seconds after the first
one. Of course by then my camera hold had slightly shifted and the enactors had
moved. So I had no idea what to expect, and even if that function still was working
on the Mamiya.
I find it an interesting composition, and of course
I love the Mamiya Sekor 150mm lens I used.
The woman shading her eyes from the sun has a second
“her” superposed lower, as my hold of the camera was lower for the second shot.
But she had already moved making the photo sequence an active one. Par contre,
the woman on the right had remained still, perfectly. The tree branches are
almost symmetrically placed in both shots, although the post upon which the
first woman is resting her left hand has a slight displacement due to my camera
movement between the shots. And, to the background of the first woman one can
discern a cowboy hat, and a woman with an umbrella.
The most
interesting movement is the man with a cowboy hat that is seen right in line
behind the head of the first woman and who was not in the frame with the first
shot – he had just walked by during the seconds between the two shots!
The photo at the outset was the first print I did of
that frame by exposing the photographic paper 10 seconds under the enlarger
light. The dark areas were contrasty but seem to be hiding more people and
events. So, I tried another print this time with 8 seconds exposure. Here is that photo:
This underexposed version tells a very different
story – the woman with umbrella was there all along holding hands with the man
wearing a cowboy hat, but the 10 seconds enlarger light exposure had totally
covered them in black! Now, we can see them both in the first shot, and also in
the second superimposed one as they too had moved forward and do not seem to be
holding hands. What I love about this detail is that we now have the couple in
profile in the first frame and in portraiture in the second – lovely!
… As I looked at the two printed photos and the
magic of double exposure on film, I could not resist thinking about the concept
of timespace in Quantum Mechanics. Simply put, some aspects of our space and
time that are continuous, freeze or stop “commuting”. Time is certainly a commuting concept – it moves
forward, but also can go back. Space is less easily understood as changing,
unless one thinks about the warping and expanding of the space concept proposed
by Einstein.
Quantum spacetime puts these two concepts together
and proposes that what was fluid, changing or moving can stop being so, or they
get “quantized” – hence the term “Quantum.”
Well, in double exposed film frames, the movement
and the space around the movement have been frozen yet we know they moved. And
the resulting new form, as if timespace, is now broken into smaller segments. In
a funny way, I think about this scenario as the “fabric of frozen movement” (my
definition.)
… More importantly, I wonder if the young man will
indeed check my blog and perhaps send me an email about his impression of the
photos.
Or, maybe he just went to his friends and said:
Guess
who I met today? A photographer stuck in
the 1950s! And he had to wind up his camera with a crank so it can shoot!!!”
October 6, 2024
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024
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