time travel to the 90s

During my last move I found a roll of colour film in one of my boxes. In every move there is always one box that never really gets unpacked because it has all sorts of random stuff in it and this is where I found that roll of colour film. It had probably been with me in England and in several places in Germany without ever getting developed and now it travelled to another country with me as well. The brand name on the canister clearly showed that this roll must have expired at the end of the 90s, because the shop that sold this brand is now out of business. So, when I was developing some Portra 400 earlier today I decided to just throw in this mystery roll as well and see what’s on it. I wasn’t expecting anything to be on it anymore, because it was stored at room temperature and I wasn’t even sure that these were even my pictures. It might just as well have been a roll of holiday snaps from my parents. However, why not try when it’s lying around here anyway?

What I found on the roll was actually quite funny. There was the obligatory picture of my shoes – some army boots actually – and for some reason there was a bottle of tomato juice next to it. The next picture was a double exposure with the shoes and the tomato juice, double-exposed with a picture of some X-Files posters that I had in my room back then. Very artistic! There were of course a number of pictures of my friends – I used to drive them crazy with my camera -, but then there were the most baffling two pictures of my computer in my room. It was actually the same picture taken twice. My computer was very important to me already back then, so I must have wanted to make sure that I get the picture! Amazing stuff! The pictures of my friends are almost all out of focus, because of the fixed focus point and shoot camera I was using and there were the occasional light leaks and flash craziness going on. I was basically doing lomo without even knowing what that is. My opinion of these shots? Well, with a better camera I probably could have taken much better pictures of my shoes and my computer!

And although all of these pictures were bad in one way or another there was one shot there that was at least interesting. It was actually quite close to what I do nowadays, so I decided to post it even though nowadays I’d skip it. It’s not quite as embarrassing as the rest though!

Would I have imagined back then that this roll of film would reappear 15 years into the future in another country to be developed not in a lab, but in my kitchen sink when most young people don’t even know anymore what a roll of film is? Definitely not!

By the way, the negatives were so fogged that they looked almost black, but they scanned surprisingly well. This roll was actually much easier to scan than the roll of Ektar that I scanned a few days ago! Goes to show that even 15 years after the zombie apocalypse started I’ll still be able to shoot colour film if I find some powder C41 kit somewhere! Well, isn’t that reassuring?

Taken with: Braun Point and Shoot
Off brand ISO 200 C41 film developed in Tetenal Colortec C41 Negative Processing Kit.

© Lilly Schwartz 1999/2000

© Lilly Schwartz 1999/2000?

One thing doesn’t seem to change: My hair is always hanging in front of my camera – back then when I was shooting at eye level and nowadays when I’m shooting from the hip!

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