As a part of trying to undergo a complete technological regression, I bought both a very small phone and a very small analog camera. The phone is a jellystar, a palm-sized android phone that I plan to switch to soon that will hopefully be barely functional and make me feel like it is 2012 again. The analog camera is one of the smallest 35mm cameras ever made, the fujica mini, a japanese design from the early 1960s targeting fashionable ladies (like me). It takes half-frame photos, which is a slight disadvantage for the quality of the final product but means I get twice as many shots per roll.
Another exciting feature of this film is that when I am scanning it, I naturally get two images per 35mm frame, so little diptychs spontaneously emerge.
It was a long weekend because of easter, and we excitedly rushed through our first roll of 35mm as we ambled about the city seeing friends. We ended up covering a lot of ground over a few days and discovered new corners of the city.
Most of these photos are from a nice sunny day when we took the train to Kreuzberg/Neukölln and went to one of our all-time favorite cafes, La Maison, by the canal. Jake and I have a particular fondness for this cafe because it was while we were sitting there together back in 2022, watching someone else’s rogue baby crawl around on the sidewalk, that we both had a sort of breakthrough moment about having kids someday. We looked around at all of the interesting families socializing with their wild babies and somehow they made the whole thing seem both more possible and more fun than it had ever seemed before.
We like going there and letting our own rogue baby wander about and maybe get into a little trouble.
This weekend our friends Anthony and Bashir gave Mack an easter basket full of chocolate eggs and bunnies and we had out first little easter egg hunt. Mack then had his first taste of chocolate and it seems to have had an immediate impact on what he considers to be sufficiently palatable.
It is quite a lot of work to develop and scan these photos, though I really enjoy the process. It makes me feel like a bit of an alchemist. I hope I continue finding time to keep up with the analog photography, I only really stopped before because of the pregnancy. I ordered the gear and chemicals for colour film developing last week so look forward to some colour shots in the coming months.
I also started uploading photos to Flickr, to keep with the early 2000s internet theme.
The film I’ve been using for the last couple of rolls is fomapan 100 (the cheapest film on the market). If you were wondering where I got the name from.