Time Capsule

Posted by Unknown March 25, 2015

Time Capsule

Canale Grande, Venezia

On one of the snow days in Istanbul, I dusted off my Holga camera that had been sitting in a drawer for almost a year, and shoved it in my bag as I went trekking around Vefa. It contained a half-finished roll that I'd long forgotten about. I couldn't remember the last time I'd taken the camera on a stroll and so was curious about what images it held inside. I finished off the roll during the snow fall and finally got around to getting it developed several weeks later. That's the beauty of the using analog film- the moments of anticipation and delayed gratification that it can bring. A friend pointed out that it seems contradictory to use analog film only to end up with a digital copy of the images, which is true, but the effects that occur are a result of using film instead of digital equipment in the first part of the process.

Clicking on the images felt like opening a trunk in the attic to uncover artifacts from the past. And these particular images did reignite a memory for me. They were from a trip I'd taken to Italy in February of last year to visit my grandma and aunt in Udine. During my week there, I'd taken a day trip to Venice, where I'd once interned at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and enjoyed a day of wandering through its entwined little streets rolling old memories in my mind like forgotten marbles in a desk drawer, and soaking in the city that looks like a stage set at every turn. It was a day of gray skies and rain, but I savored my time alone to explore, steeped in my own thoughts. Finding my way back to Dorsoduro street by street, each turn revealing a new landmark that confirmed what the next turn would be. I found a restaurant I'd once eaten in with my dad, where each day a new menu was created based on the owner's mother's daily inspirations, and ate and read. I visited the PGC and the Francois Pinault Collection at Punta della Dogana, and just walked and walked, a pinball set in motion.