A nerdy rant on two of the processes that once dominated pre-digital color image production
I’ve always found socialist culture interesting, especially a few years ago when I started toying with their film. The stark contrast of an economy and production being run by the state versus private companies such as here in the US is worth studying. The clothes, the cars, the packaging of food itself are all different than how it is here, and that includes film.
A few years ago while deep in my eBay addiction, I came across a large assortment of expired soviet color film, from film manufacturers such as Svema (Ukraine) & ORWO (GDR), which have either ceased to exist or have been rebranded/absorb into a western conglomerate.
I started to shoot this film on medium format and 35mm with the expectation that I would be able to process it with regular ol’ color chemistry, C-41, which is the dominant and arguably the last color negative process.
After shooting my first roll & throwing it into a 102° F bath for a couple minutes, I was disappointed to pull out a strip of plastic with floating bits of emulsion. After further research, I learned that the chemistry for this film process was completely different, known as ORWO C-5168 (which develops at room temp, not hot chemistry).
(For those interested, here is a link to the formulas and development procedure.)
It was impossible to find the chemistry here in the states or anywhere else besides Russia, which eBay forbids the purchase of goods from in the US as part of an embargo. After lots of digging and some useful pointers from Reddit users, I came across an individual in Ukraine who sold analogue film supplies, including the C-5168 chemistry. After several weeks of waiting, a few hiccups at customs, and the efficiency of the USPS in Chicago, I received my first box of chemistry.
It took a lot of trial & error to determine the proper ISO which to expose the film at, but at least now we could see an image. The film was rated at ISO 50 originally, and had expired between 1987-1991. Based on a rule of them of halving its ISO for every decade expired, we started at ISO 6, but found ISO 3 produced truer colors for what we could get out of it, considering it was 30+ years old and stored in unknown conditions (with heat being especially destructive to the film’s emulsion).
After a summer of experimentation, my friend Cole Grodzin and I decided to produce a book as part of our capstone project that utilizes film processed with C-5168. Our handmade book, Erasure, was the documentation of decay, deterioration & destruction within a capitalist society, captured on soviet color film with the process of degradation displayed through a medium that’s desensitized and deteriorating itself.
Since then, I continue to document the Ouroboros that is capitalism itself, the consumption of itself and falling apart until there is nothing less. From infrastructure, housing, social programs & public amenities, I am attempting to the broaden the scope of our project and what the lens captures.
This is not just a critique of capitalism or the infatuation of socialism, but rather a staunch assertion that capitalism itself must be abolished.
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