The camera weighed heavy in my palms, all metal and glass, dented and chipped. I raised the viewfinder to my eye and looked at the world outside of the study window. My hands enveloped the contours of the camera knowingly, shifting wheels without my brain having to think about it, but the needle and circle in the viewfinder refused to meet. The camera remained silent. I lowered it, not bothering to trigger the shutter.
It was ridiculous to expect a different result than from the last time I'd used my Minolta SRT303. I had only let it sit on a shelf, but I wanted my memories to be wrong. I wanted to camera to spring into action like it used to, but it would not. Instead I had to face the truth. The camera was somehow broken. I turned to the Internet and soon found the cause of the problem. The coupled meter mechanism had stopped working, the tension in the spring too loose after years of use. I watched repair videos but I gained no confidence. I care deeply about this camera. It is my workhorse, an invisible tool often strapped around my chest.
I placed the camera back on the storage shelf and fired off a series of e-mails to repair shops in the hope one of them would be able to replace the part. E-mails sent, I turned the computer off and slumped on the sofa. In front of me, an IKEA storage unit stared back at me blankly. Film cameras, empty rolls of films, chemicals, sleeves of negatives, and books about photography waited for me to get up and reach out. I did not move.
For months I had been feeling apathic about photography. I had picked up a camera here and there but there had been no joy in the process. My body had known what to do and I had followed the motions, but it had been in vain. Everything had been automated, soulless. I closed my eyes. There had been no joy. I let those five words grow inside of me. I had been evading this truth for weeks. I had sought excuse after excuse for my lack of enthusiasm towards photography; from the Twitter exodus to the long nights of winter, from Covid to a drunkenness on words, and everything else I could blame. But it was much simpler than this. I felt no joy for the process.
I opened my eyes, the array of gear unchanged in front of me. A wave of sadness engulfed me and for a moment I choked on my own breath. What if this was it? The end of my love affair with image making? Interests ebb and flow. I had left photography before, but back then I was not so solidly living and breathing the process of image making. I was only fumbling around with tools I did not understand. Still, maybe it was time for me to leave again, focus on writing and other creative outlets?
I stood up and skimmed the edges of my cameras, my fingers flitting deftly from one to the other in a vain attempt to prove me wrong. I sensed no desire to pick one up. Okay, I thought. Okay, I repeated to myself. I will wait and let the sadness spill over from my mind to my soul. I gripped the top of my Minolta SRT303 and let go.
My hands in soil and my fingers on keyboards, I let the thought of photography drift from me. My pile of film to develop did not dwindle but neither did it grow, the folders of images to edit laid untouched, and the batteries of my digital camera gradually lost their charge. And I was fine. For the most part. I ached for the comfort of a camera by my side and longed to frame images in a viewfinder, but I did not seek out any of my photographic tools. I knew I needed time. I hoped that the old idiom 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' would prove to be true for me. At the same time, I allowed for the slithering thought of loss to take root. I did not feed it but I opened the door for it.
Weeks passed and the seed of sadness swelled and thickened in me. I tried to write of my sorrow but could not find the words. I was too afraid to admit the possibility of loss outside of the ether of my thoughts. So much of my identity and communities had been formed around photography. If I truly left photography and image making, then what of my place in those spaces? Could I still belong? I plucked the idea out of my mind, not ready to confront its ramifications. I returned to words about the more-than-human world. I spent days deep inside thesaurus, crafting sentences and wrangled words into shape. I read newsletters from writers and refocused on pen and paper.
A pile of hiking gear was strewn across the carpet behind the sofa, ready to be packed into a bag the following day. A camera hid amongst the piles of clothes, food, and camping kit. My attention constantly returned to it, my body yearning to pluck it out of the mess on the floor to return it to the IKEA shelves of the study. I was not ready to return to photography but I wanted to capture images of my upcoming hike. I was due to walk a hundred miles with my brother to celebrate his birthday and it felt wrong not to record any of it in images.
Memory making, not image making, I reminded myself. This was not photography to craft carefully framed and exposed images, this was photography for spontaneous moments of shared joy. I secretly hoped to tap into my brother newfound enthusiasm for film photography and experimentation to lighten the weight of sorrow that still flowed heavy in my soul.
I carried the point and shoot camera by my belt, ready for it to spring into action but my hand bypassed it often in favour of the notebook and pencil that resided in my pocket. I helped my brother learn his new camera, my knowledge seeping out of me easily but without the passion of days gone by. I observed him with envy as he framed and reframed his images, as he wondered what would happen if he tried that filter or this double exposure. Had I lost myself in the technicality and science of photography? Had I simply forgotten to play? I shook my head. I could not explain but I knew the answers of my apathy towards photography did not lay along those avenues of thoughts.
We returned home, my brother having exposed multiple rolls of film, my one roll still unfinished in the camera. I returned it to the shelf and let it be. I flicked through the album of photos in my phone, fuller than the latent images on the negative in my camera. Those were the snapshots I had wanted to capture on film but did not even though my camera had been easier to reach than my phone.
The evening of my brother’s birthday arrived. We prepared to leave the house for dinner in town to mark the day. I put my shoes on, slid my notebook and pencil into their now familiar place in my trousers, shoved my wallet into my jeans rear pocket, and readied to leave the house.
‘Wait!’ I shouted to my brother, the house door nearly closed. I ran up the stairs, grabbed my digital camera and turned it on. The battery was not completely flat. I slung it across my shoulders and headed back out. My being trembled from the familiar strap crossing my upper body. My hands constantly sought out the camera, brushing against it as we walked. Conversation flowed easily between us, my mind occupied away from the swirls of emotions rising within my body. At the bus stop, I grabbed the camera, my fingers sliding into place as if I’d never stopped using the camera and froze an image of my brother poking his tongue out at me. I smiled and laughed.
Throughout the evening, as our steps synced and our thoughts poured, I sensed a lightness in me. It was effortless to bring the camera to my eyes, to turn wheels and press buttons to dial in the settings to best represent in pixel what my eyes perceived. I did not think. I did not fear. I simply recorded the world around me as I used to.
I charged the camera batteries that evening, ready for an excursion to Cardiff the following day. The camera remained by my side, the viewfinder familiar and loved. I was seeing again, photographing again. Effortlessly. I could not explain what had happened, but I did not care to investigate what had drawn me to the camera the night before. All I cared about was the feeling of joy coursing through me as I held the camera and pressed the shutter button. Most of the images turned out blurry and framed at a wonky angle, but I did not mind. The camera on the desk, cable hooked into the laptop and images loading into my hard drive, I placed my hands on the lens and sent a silent greeting of thanks. I knew this camera was not the right one for my style of image making, but it somehow, unexpectedly unearthed me out of my apathy, sorrow and fears uprooted. A shift had occurred, one that told me I am capable of finding joy in the process of image making. The rest I can figure out later.
