Time Travels: My Earliest Days of Film Photography

 by Kevin Lane

Last my wife, Debbie, pulled a large plastic tub from underneath our bed and began digging through hundreds and hundreds of photographs (If you are my around my age, you probably have a tub like this as well). She was looking for pictures of our wedding rehearsal to show my youngest daughter, Amber, who currently is planning her own November wedding. However, the search for a single photograph soon turned into a mammoth trip down memory lane of the Lane Family. There were piles of prints scattered on the bed as Debbie attempted to organize the chaos that existed in the photo tub. I made the mistake of walking in the room and was quickly recruited to help, and before long, I too was lost in stacks of handheld memories, some of which date back to before I was born.

As one point Debbie held out an envelope in my direction and said. "You might want to take a look at this." The envelope held about a dozen black and white negatives in 120 format. The film was cut into individual frames, and as I held up one frame to the ceiling light, I realized I was holding one of the very first rolls of film I ever shot. Later, I got out my light table and examined the frames with a loupe. I could see images that dated from around 1969 when I was eleven years old. They were images of Shutter Brother Kelley, me, our younger brother Michael, our family dog as a very young puppy, and our front yard on Vance Avenue in Chattanooga. The light from the light table was projecting the past right into my eyes.

A testament to the past:  This film was actually there.

As I sat at the table looking at these images, all the memories came flooding back. I actual could remember making most of these images, but what I really remember was how Kelley and I got the images from the camera to actual paper. Our Uncle Jonesy had given us a Yankee 18 Piece DeLuxe Home Developing Kit ("Everything you need for truly Professional Quality") for Christmas (you can read more about our experience with this kit here). I distinctly remember us trying to make our small apartment bathroom light tight, rolling the film onto the plastic reels, mixing up the chemicals, and following the instructions to develop the film. When we removed the processed film from the tank,  there was clear evidence that our "darkroom" was not completely dark. Our darkroom techniques left a lot to be desired, nevertheless, and to our amazement, there were images on the film. And now I was staring at those same negatives some fifty-three years later.

The Yankee 18 Piece Home Developing Kit also included a contact printing light box, photo paper, print chemistry, trays, and tongs. So, when the negatives were dry, we set about making prints from these negatives. I want you to thing about this for a moment. People today frame analog photography as some sort of distant lost magic that is either between extremely inconvenient or damned near impossible to do today. "Wouldn't this be a lot easier with a digital camera?" I hear that one a lot. More than a lot. But here we were, to fifth graders learning how to shoot, develop, and print film in our small bathroom. We were in to it! We bought more film. We shot it. We developed it and made more prints. We were on repeat, and we were hooked. Talk about addictions; we were creativity addicts at the age of eleven.

People say to me now, "Wow, you've really gone crazy with this film photography thing lately." They have no idea. The evidence is in those surviving negatives and contact prints.

Me with our newly acquired puppy, Pogo. Taken by Kelley.

A Pogo portrait.

Me in our front yard with our younger brother, Micheal.

Kelley chatting with two of our den mothers during a Cub Scouts outing.

Bedtime for Michael. Our foray into flash photography.

As I kept digging through the box of photographs, I found more early negatives and prints, and to my amazement, I found some from around my sophomore year of high school. These would have been made four years after our first photographs using the home developing kit. Apparently, photography was not a passing fad to us. Also apparently, we were able to get more chemistry and paper, although I have no idea how or where we got it. But somehow we did.

Aunt Clair (L) and Uncle Jonesy (R) greeting guests at their annual Christmas Open House.
I took this one and the one below. I'm guessing 1971.

Kelley is holdinghis newly acquired Kodak Instamatic X-15 camera.

Uncle Jonesy, my Grandmother, and my Mom at our 8th grade graduation ceremony.
I distinctly remember taking this.

I know the date of this one:  December 25, 1972.
Kelley took this one of me looking over Christmas gifts. 

Kelley with fellow band members at a high school band car wash, fall of 1973. This is a scan from 
and actual contact print.

In case you are interested, we likely used two different cameras to make these photographs. Some were made with our parent's Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash Model, which we had "borrowed." I think the earliest ones, however, were made with a Diana, a cheap plastic medium format camera made in the 1960's by the Great Wall Plastic Factory of Hong Kong (you can read more about this camera and how I recently found one in it's original box at a local antique store here). As for film, some of it is Kodak (likely Verichrome Pan), but the manufacturer of some of it is a mystery that will likely never be solved.

The two cameras used to make the above images were just like these.

The point of all this is that I am so grateful to have had family members like Uncle Jonesy, who took an interest in us and invested his time and dollars to steer us in a creative and fun direction like photography. His mentorship had a lasting impact, as I am photographing, developing, and printing to this day. And no wonder why I sometimes feel like a kid in the darkroom. It's still just as fun as it ever was. I enjoy it so much that I feel compelled to share what I learn and be a mentor to others, hence the UJC Podcast, this blog, and the teaching work I do for our community darkroom. I don't want my negatives and prints to be the sum total of my photographic legacy. I hope that there will be others who, because of something they heard on the podcast, read on this blog, or learned in one of my workshops, will find a passion for film photography and leave a legacy of their own. Sharing is caring.