It’s a strange experience to be the first to see someone else’s film. This is a certain voyeurism usually only afforded to a developer. I have been the sole witness to tender moments between lovers, fists raised in protest, bare bodies floating on water, and smoke exhaled from deep within my lungs.

The idea for this project first grew roots in 2018. I lay sprawled out in the backseat of a taxicab, nursing an aching stomach that had been spoiled by an earlier rendezvous with roadside balut. Neon signs were glowing outside the windows, moving by like a fever dream. The scene is burned like a photo in my memory from six months of traveling through Asia that year. I frequently met interesting people and formed quick, transient relationships before I was whisked away to the next location. I wanted a way to stay connected to their lives and to continue to see the world as they see it.

Single-use, “disposable” cameras became the medium for connection. I was influenced by the Artists Palette in Death Valley. I once lay on the sand for hours, melting into the earth while watching the colors dance and pulse in a surrealistic choreography. Hordes of passersby lined up, some in costume or with props, shot several photos, reshot when the first was not to their liking, and quickly disappeared back the way they came. Perhaps I’m shackled to judgment, but their actions seemed led by their phones, like predestination in the digital age. “Come to take your photo, but stay awhile,” I thought. Experience the place while you’re here, not through a screen later on.

We’re accustomed to immediacy in all realms of life – especially with images. We take multiple pictures on our phones and digital cameras, easily discarding those that aren’t exactly to our liking. We embellish photos using filters. We control the outcome. We shoot endlessly because film has been replaced by megabytes. While film cameras are not a novel idea, what if you made photos with the potential for never seeing their outcome?

With single-use cameras, there is no opportunity to reshoot or edit. The film roll is finite. The photographers must pick their moments carefully. They must ask, “What moment becomes worthy of one of my twenty-seven exposures?”         

I began to give out cameras to people I met on the road. I started to include the subjects and participants of my written and audio work. Friends received cameras in the mail without warning. Strangers received hopeful messages online asking them to take part. I reached back into my past, hoping the project could reconnect me with people I had long ago lost contact with.

 The photographer isn’t given any parameters. After the final winding click of the roll, the camera is mailed back to me. Then, I bring the film to a small shop in downtown Brooklyn that develops the photos quickly to give eternal life to these captured moments.

I initially envisioned seeing moments of grand adventure, participants scaling the rocky edges of lava-spitting volcanoes or running from great horned beasts in Pamplona. Some of that is in the developed photographs. However, what became evident was that the moments that the participants chose to shoot were more subdued. I received scenes of their smiling lovers, shared meals, simple outings, and portraits of beloved pets. Their shots revealed our commonalities, showing that whether you made your photos on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, adjacent to the Persian Gulf in Kuwait City, or in the bustling streets of Jakarta, you hold common wants, needs, and desires with the rest of the world.

When I think of my own travels, it isn’t wild nights of partying or death-defying adventures that I appreciate most. It’s quiet moments, often before the sun has pulled the world out of sleep while sipping coffee and scratching the head of a dusty dog in the sleepy towns of Samaipata or Merzouga.

Along the way, many cameras disappeared into the ether. Participants dropped out or stopped responding to my messages altogether. Cameras were lost in the mail. Film went unused from cameras that are likely still sitting on a shelf in a participant’s home. One camera was stolen, along with the car it was sitting in, from a driveway in Memphis. For years now, my fingers have been crossed as I will that the cameras survive the journey back to New York.

Often, the film is overexposed or altogether unusable. Many photos have minor blemishes, and I’ve come to love the mistakes, the castaways of the film roll, and the ugly ducklings. The too-dark scenes feel like a still frame from a campy B-horror flick. The film burns that disintegrate half of an image. The grainy, snow-like quality that blankets some photos in fuzz.

I released the first of what I hope will be many publications with work from the project. The first volume of The Disposable Camera Project Zine is sold out, but there are many rolls of film waiting to be seen by the world, so a second volume is soon to follow.

You can follow along with project updates on Instagram here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim Vetter is a teacher and writer living in Ridgewood, New York.
You can find his other work at https://linktr.ee/thevoyagesoftimvetter.