Photos were at one time created by a sort of magical alchemy of light, space and time intersecting. The results would emerge hours, days or even years later as an object you could hold and that would decay and fade. Seeing the simple basic cameras I remembered in a shop a few weeks ago being sold now as Gen Z novelties, I decided to pick one up knowing the conundrum of film development loomed on the horizon. I had stopped using film cameras a few years ago when the cost became increasingly expensive and was no longer paid for by my employers. Convenience also became a factor. The last time I dropped a film off at a local pharmacy it took two weeks and three trips for them to locate it and in the end they did a terrible job. Specialized labs are far from me and pricey. The whole exercise puts pressure on the photos you take, which in some ways is maybe not such a bad thing. So much of contemporary life is low stakes. Objects can be purchased and returned in the blink of an eye. Words and images have become increasingly devalued when converted into their digital form. Like shadows of the things they represent. Now that smart phones have pretty much plateaued in terms of their technological advances all the focus is on the quality of the cameras they contain. Even now I marvel at the sharpness of the images they produce and the vibrancy of colours, seeming to outdoing nature at its own game (except when it come to the ever elusive moon.) 

So I brought this little plastic box along with me on my trip to eastern Canada and snapped pictures through the tiny viewfinder that reminds me of an apartment peephole. Unlike the commanding open and close shutter sound a real camera makes, this one emits an anticlimactic little "click" that made my wife chuckle every time. I have no idea what the pictures look like. Yet. It's that "yet" I miss. The gulf of expectation between action and result.