funeral film ...

When I was six, I found a camera. It was my grandpa’s. My dad’s dad’s. I begged my mom to let me use it, to buy me some film so I could play with a real camera. She said it never really worked, that I’d be unhappy with the results, but gave in anyway. She wasn’t wrong. The camera wouldn’t advance film properly. Sometimes you’d get a single frame in your photo, sometimes 10 or more. But that weirdness is what made it special.

That camera never got thrown out and I managed to have it stored with my collection of toy cameras from undergrad. Months before Dad passed I tested Grandpa’s camera with some leftover black and white film to see if it was how I remembered. I spent a few hours in a snowstorm taking photos. I knew what I had taken photos of, but when I developed the film, so many of those shots blended together or didn’t show up at all. 

Memory is a strange thing. Especially when we’re going through stress or trauma. I know that both memory and photography are flawed regarding what is true, so Grandpa’s camera seemed like the most accurate way to document Dad’s funeral. A layering of images. A jumbled mess of moments in time. Some parts omitted, while others create completely new realities as they get stacked together.

The final three images were printed on backlight film and installed in rusty shoplights from Dad’s garage.