Undeniable Failure

In 2021 I had decided, along with three friends that we were gonna spend the next summer traveling across Europe. To fund the trip we got jobs at a retirement home for a year serving food to exuberantly wealthy elderly people. My plan was to photograph the entire experience and to come back home with this massive body of work that would be the best thing I’ve ever done. So I spent much of my savings on a large amount of 35mm film and we were off.

I was shooting our trip for a month and a half before I noticed that the film advance on my camera started acting up. A day later the advance was completely stuck. I was disappointed but thought “Hey at least I shot half the trip”, I had already gone through 3/4ths of the film I brought with and was somewhat satisfied.

On the return home I dropped off a huge bag of 35mm canisters, waited two weeks, paid a huge development and scanning bill, and discovered my worst nightmare. 94% of the images were nothing but grain and noise. 5% of the images contained these strange half frame shots that you see here. And 1% of the images (from my first 3 days of the trip) came out totally fine. Completely confused, devastated, and embarrassed I hid the images for a couple years. Thinking about them made me mad. It was and is my largest failure as a photographer.

In 2024 I reexamined the photographs and I no longer felt that resentment towards them that I once did. As the time from the trip had passed my memories from the trip started to blend together and fade away. I no longer remembered the specific shots that I know I missed out on. Instead the images perfectly represent the way I feel about that trip now. Fleeting moments that blur together in my mind. Moments that I can feel but cant necessarily remember. A perfect accident but yet an undeniable failure.

35mm. 2022.