Back on film baby!!! When I was 12 I won the saskamateur photo competition’s junior division, and the recognition of my peers was enough to paralyze me into more or less never taking a photo again.
Film is vulnerable in a way that made sense to me as a kid. In a way that would also make it terrifying to have someone else see. I guess it’s something like: if you only get one chance with a moment, and it’s gone forever, and the thing that’s left after is a photo which you had to take reflexively, then we might just be looking at something pretty authentically connected to you. That reflex shows up and you take the photo and you don’t have time to edit your sense of what someone else is seeing or wants to see. You just have you, and what you feel.
I think that’s what was scariest for me, as a kid, being recognized for taking photos. Was that if they spoke to something in someone else, that meant someone was hearing what I was truly saying. I think I took up photography hoping that I could hide behind the lens, and instead, I felt even more visible. Spooky!
Shot with an AE-1 on ektachrome 100, cross processed.