What's film? Are you kidding?!

I recently spent some time talking about documentary photographer, Dorothea Lange with my son’s 3rd grade class. I went in armed with pictures of the 4 x 5 camera she used and a piece of 4 x 5 film to show them. One of the key things I wanted them to understand was that in the 1930s the process of picture making was quite a bit more involved than whipping an iPhone out of your pocket. We had a great discussion about the FSA (Farm Security Administration) and the power of documentary photography and I have to say I was really impressed with their analogies between Lange’s Migrant Family and the disheartening images coming out of Haiti after the earthquake.

What blew me away, however, was when I asked them what they thought photography was like when Lange's pictures were taken. I got answers like “big camera”, “the camera you had to put your head under a cloth for” and the like. They got the challenges of shooting with such a big camera. That was great. But when I took out the sheet of film the connection was completely lost. “What’s that?” they said and then when I explained that it was sheet film for the large camera I got “what’s film?" What's film?? Are you kidding me? I totally wasn’t prepared for that since film was such a large part of my childhood and early professional life. I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised since I’ve been messing around with digital cameras for almost 18 years but I really was caught off guard. Film, gone the way of the 8-Track. Wow. You do know what an 8-track is right?