We Do Film

Chicago, February 2023

It was the last day of a two-week business trip that had carried me from a small dot on the map in Eastern Europe to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and finally to Chicago. Sunday morning, a few hours to spare before the flight home. Weather changes quickly here — the sunny Saturday was gone, and I found myself roaming the streets early in the morning, soaked in thin rain, guided by the map on my phone within a radius that kept me safely close to the hotel.

I walked along the Marina Towers, stopped on the bridge across the river, and paused to photograph the towers and the skyscrapers built by the followers of Mies van der Rohe. Trump Tower was slowly disappearing into fog. I made another frame on my Canon 3000V — my travelling camera — with the last of a roll of Kodak ColorPlus.

I carried on down State Street, past the Chicago Theatre, until something pulled me left onto Madison, then right, following the underground train tracks along Wabash Avenue until I came across the store: Chicago’s most complete photographic studio since 1899.

I moved closer to the window, feeling like a child in front of a toy shop, trying to take in all the wonderful things inside. I stood there almost still for five minutes, holding on to that warm feeling — a déjà vu, a throwback to childhood.

The We Do Film sign made me smile.

Back then, shooting film was something I made myself do every month — at least one roll. It wasn’t easy to get it developed in my home town, and harder still to get it digitised, but we were a handful of enthusiasts. A small group of dissidents who preferred to walk the streets with an old analogue camera rather than the latest digital one.

We hunted antique stores and flea markets for lenses and bodies, and after a big find — and the mandatory show-and-tell — the new piece was tested, passed around, and enjoyed by whoever in the group was lucky enough to own a compatible system.

Finding this store felt like a direct confirmation that our little band of self-described misfits was on to something. I still feel it whenever I pick up a film camera: I’m more connected, creatively, to the whole process.

It was windy — pun intended — and still raining as I turned back toward the hotel and got ready for the flight home. I’m grateful for everything that trip gave me: the things I learned, and the creative connections I made with colleagues. Discovering this store was the cherry on top, all the more so for happening in the final hours.

As luck would have it, I was back in Chicago a year later, and I made a small dream come true. I walked in, and it felt like the promised land — that child again, surrounded by all those marvellous photographic things. I chose a pack of unopened Polaroid 600 instant black-and-white film for my Mamiya RZ67. It carries a private meaning: the film was manufactured in the United States in 1982 — the same year as the Mamiya, and the same year as me.

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Some of the photographs accompanying this piece were converted to black and white. The last is a digital snapshot — one I should print and hang somewhere.