Something to emerge
26 March 2026
26 March 2026
“Sometimes nothing stands out, nothing feels worth capturing. In those moments, the instinct is to wait – to hold off until something meaningful appears. But the opposite tends to be true. Begin anyway. Photograph without expectation. Even the things that don’t seem to matter. Because once the process starts, perception shifts. More becomes visible. Moments begin to reveal themselves. As if the act itself creates the conditions for something to emerge.”
I more or less tried that with this latest roll of film. To ‘begin anyway’. Despite the lack of ideas, and almost resenting the whole endeavour. The looking but not seeing anything. The ugliness of this city. Not that I have anything against ugliness in itself, but I do take issue with the ugliness that surrounds me every day. Using film for an exercise like this might seem odd. A rather expensive choice for something that felt doomed from the outset. But I needed the unpredictability of film. I wouldn’t have managed to get myself out onto the street with the Nikon; better to throw some money at the problem.
But did I get what I was promised?
I more or less tried that with this latest roll of film. To ‘begin anyway’. Despite the lack of ideas, and almost resenting the whole endeavour. The looking but not seeing anything. The ugliness of this city. Not that I have anything against ugliness in itself, but I do take issue with the ugliness that surrounds me every day. Using film for an exercise like this might seem odd. A rather expensive choice for something that felt doomed from the outset. But I needed the unpredictability of film. I wouldn’t have managed to get myself out onto the street with the Nikon; better to throw some money at the problem.
But did I get what I was promised?
At the very least, I experienced that almost childlike pleasure of unpacking the scans. But other than that, not really. Which doesn’t surprise me, since I took one or two pictures per week or so. Meaning that there was no ‘process’ to speak of, let alone something emerging from it. But even so. If you recognize
something as half-failed—technically or otherwise—you also see that it half-succeeded. If your expectations are low, you either prove yourself wrong (oh but hey, that’s actually quite nice), or right, a win either way.
Some of the photos give me the feeling that I photographed Rotterdam in the early 1990s, when the city was ugly in a much nicer way, raw and undeveloped, purely down to the visual qualities of this film and how I exposed it. The tones, the low contrast and the grain, in combination with the subject. At the same time, I found myself thinking that I should go back to a proper black-and-white film—as opposed to the Ilford XP2 which is processed in C41 chemicals for colour film. And then I discovered a new lab within cycling distance, one I’d like to try next time because I like their concept and they seem to do good work, including proper b/w processing, which my current lab doesn’t offer. That’s what it got me. A feeling of ‘next time’. Which is more than I expected.
Olympus OM-1 35mm with Ilford XP2. Quote stolen from Noice magazine.
Some of the photos give me the feeling that I photographed Rotterdam in the early 1990s, when the city was ugly in a much nicer way, raw and undeveloped, purely down to the visual qualities of this film and how I exposed it. The tones, the low contrast and the grain, in combination with the subject. At the same time, I found myself thinking that I should go back to a proper black-and-white film—as opposed to the Ilford XP2 which is processed in C41 chemicals for colour film. And then I discovered a new lab within cycling distance, one I’d like to try next time because I like their concept and they seem to do good work, including proper b/w processing, which my current lab doesn’t offer. That’s what it got me. A feeling of ‘next time’. Which is more than I expected.
Olympus OM-1 35mm with Ilford XP2. Quote stolen from Noice magazine.