the 120 film I bought on ebay

Buying things on ebay is a cyclical process. Any period of three years or so will provide the DNA of my interests; and a man’s interests, or a woman’s, rather than their addictions, are supremely telling…in a way I would describe addiction as the condition of having insufficient real interests…and you could say life is the process of becoming interested and then losing that interest to find a new one…

These rolls of film were the beginning of a new phase that would culminate in many developments. I sensed as much as I tentatively went for a batch of 5 rather than a couple or even one. I was about to enter an INDUSTRIAL phase of art and photography and I needed supplies. Five seems pretty meagre when put like that but my thinking needed time to change, this was just the beginning.

HP5 has a long history. It’s a fast film – 400ASA- and is a competitor to Kodak Tri-X- and though like all films it’s changed since the film heyday of the 1960s and 70s (dyes have been added, silver content reduced, film thinned) it appears to have changed less that Tri-X has. Though you’ll find plenty of people to contradict that, film being, a very subjective thing and, in the hands of a capable darkroom technician, capable of being stretched to look like almost anything you want. Almost.

The main male perfumes, the cheap ones I knew from the 1970s, were Old Spice and Brut 33. Both contained substances that have now been banned. Both are still available but though bearing the same names and packaging are only a shadow whiff of their former selves…(after a long absence….[pause while I try to find some to buy- original ones on ebay- OK, found a gift pack of Old Spice from the 70s at £29.99, I put it on my WatchList. It seems that Old Spice stopped being old spice in 1990- or rather it was watered down by Proctor and Gamble who bought it. What’s odd is the internet is full of people saying the smell hasn’t changed when it very obviously has- A LOT. Original Old Spice was as pungent a waft as sea weed… ]

The parallel with film is obvious. When you look at and handle film from forty or fifty years ago it is more substantial and the blacks are blacker. It may have more range too and certainly was easier to fix if you over exposed it. But large companies like Proctor and Gamble step in and trim the costs to make even more money for their greedy selves. I have given a couple of talks to P&G executives and they were nice enough chaps etc. but their business is based on sucking up living brands and then extracting as much money from them as possible without a thought for giving people what they really want: value, the real thing, an honest transaction. There is a stench of ‘con’ about Gillette razors- priced way over the odds- I wonder if the hipster beard thing was an unconscious move against the corporate stranglehold on shaving…

Publishers, too, follow the P&G model. They buy up small publishers, liquidate the back list and keep the single bestselling author – often rebranding it a ‘Penguin Classic’ or some other guarantor of steady income. Of course they tell the publisher they will keep all their staff and books in print etc etc….Lies, all lies!

People need to know that big business is not on their side. Small business may well be, but a big business in the business of ‘brand management’ is simply in the business of extracting money from the mugs and the suckers- you and me. Is that too on the nose? Too broad and let’s face it, whine-ee? Is it the eternal whinge of the man with not enough cash and a chip on both shoulders? Shouldn’t we just accept the fact that big bizz is amoral and that it is our job to place our business with small bizz? Yes but by shifting the conversation as they say, to one where the default reading is that big bizz is NASTY, we may slowly cause it to wither away like Marx’s state, a topic I am sure I shall return to.

So, HP5, Ilford in 120 roll form for my 6x6 Mamiya C3 camera, a twin lens reflex camera made in 1964, the year of my birth. I am as old as my camera and it’s a very fine camera too- massively heavy as over 2kg, solid as hell but also not indestructible. On my previous birthday I had gone off to photograph a pillbox on Chesil Beach and the wind had blown the tripod over denting the side of the camera back. I was able to straighten it out but I fear the back isn’t exactly flat now. I’ve not produced many good photos from this camera – which I bought using part of the $600 I found in my paypal account in 2015- but the pictures have all been original in some way, low key, maybe even boring but still original- I’m thinking here of my rubber glove shots, the warehouse that looks like an American Barn of the Midwest and the shot of man who looks like a psycho in a college movie…just rereading that indicates what role photography plays in my life, how it allows me to explore the left brain, not entirely wholesome, mechanical, death impregnated side…the side that likes bunkers and abandoned cars and buildings. But art makes it sort of semi-legit, at least I think or hope it does.

120 roll film rather than the commoner 35mm in a cassette is my preferred sort of film to use. I get 12 pictures 6 cm square and these are big enough to print by contact rather than enlargement. The size means dust and micro hairs are less of an issue and I like the less fiddly aspect of moving them around. Anything that gets me away from the tyranny of digital. Anything that gets me away from a computer keyboard…

I know that the pictures I will take with this film will be different than previous ones as I have embarked recently on a stripped down and standardised attempt at photography. In the past I tried all kinds of films and developer chemicals, now I’m only using those that are very quick and easy to work with. I’m fed up of messing around in the darkroom with complicated chems but I still want that old school film experience.