The begining

So, as this is the first post of the blog, I think we could start talking about how the passion of film entered my life, and who’s responsible for the fact that I’m sitting here talking about photography, instead of football or politics.

When I was a child, my grandpa used to tell me stories about his travels around the world.

He had this big grey sling bag he’d bring with himself to the end of the world. Inside, it lied the most amazing camera I had ever seen; or as I liked to call it: “one of the big ones” (born in the digital era, looking at a regular sized camera seemed to me like an abnormal machine).

He always had his camera with him, and he loved not only to take lots of pictures, but also to spend time developing, printing and framing them.

I really couldn’t understand this love for photography when I was a child, and anytime I asked him about it, he’d always reply the same thing:

By the time I wasn’t truly able to understand the meaning of it.

But time passed, and some things changed. Now he lives alone in the same old flat he shared with Grandma. He’s barely able to walk by himself, so he spends most of the time on the computer or watching TV.

One day I decided to pay him a surprise visit while he was home alone. When I arrived, I found him at the computer; printing old photographs of Grandma, framing them, and looking for somewhere on his shelf to put them. I remembered the many times I’d caught him doing the same thing whenever he was alone. And that’s when his famous words came back to me.

The best way of holding a memory forever is to photograph it.

We spent the whole afternoon talking about his pictures, and before I went home, I asked him for using his old camera, which he didn’t use for a while.
He went to his wardrobe, and took from the very end that one grey sling bag, then gave it to me.
His words were simple: “I’ll let you photograph everything you don’t want to forget, as long as you bring me your pictures, so we can enjoy them together”.

I accepted.

And since then, I learned how to use film, how to change the ISO, how to controll a “real camera”, and how to make frames last forever.

Whenever I develop a new film, we go together and react to the results. He asks me to print the ones that he likes the most, and they get added to his collection of pictures, that somehow still grows in that overbooked desk.

I owe him this ability that now I have, to make memories last forever.