Film photography as a practice has been an established discipline for centuries.
The first permanent photograph was captured by Nicéphore Niépce, a French inventor, using a camera obscura and light-sensitive substances. However, this process took hours and was expensive and time-consuming to develop a single photograph.
William Henry Fox Talbot, an English inventor, developed an alternative process in 1839, creating the first film negative. This allowed for the potential to reprint the same image multiple times. Black and white print dominated the industry; however, the desire for colour prints persisted.
In 1935, Kodak’s Kodachrome process was introduced, using a layered emulsion to capture colour information. It became the first commercially successful colour film and is still used consistently within film photography today.
The process from conceptualisation to execution in regards to turning a negative film into a print can be a time-consuming task. In this week’s Plum Story, Giacomo Mantovani, award-winning filmmaker, photographer and creator, takes us through his process from start to finish. Showing how traditional methods of film photography are still widely used today.
His current collection, Peaceful Minds, is a series of unique prints, based on Giacomo’s desire to produce a series that reflects an understanding of peace in a chaotic world.
At the start of every project, he begins with a drawn art piece, translating what he believes needs to be said and heard into a visible creation. After his creation of the piece into a realised form, he decides which medium is best used to translate the idea.
In Giacomo’s process he shows us how he purposefully manipulates the steps to ensure that each image is unique, using splatters of developer to add chaos, the noise, and deeper context to the images.
The destruction of the prints is an important part of Giacomo’s ethos in his creative process. Only 15 limited edition prints exist for each image.
Watch the full video below, where The Plum Edit team got a front-row seat to witness Giacomo’s creative process.
