Found Film, Found Moments

FOUND FILM FOUND MOMENTS

BY BRIAR CHAPUT

A FEW YEARS AGO, I WALKED INTO A USED BOOKSTORE on Spadina Avenue in Toronto. It was dusty, cramped, and dark, with barely enough light to read anything if you weren’t directly under an overhead lamp. At the back of the store there was a doorway that led to another maze of overflowing shelves, where I found an old wood cabinet of drawers. I just happened to glance down to spot a yellow piece of paper, with the word “pictures” written in black sharpie, taped to a drawer. The drawer was packed with 4x6 inch personal photographs. I spent the next hour digging through them carefully in the dim light, then spent about $15 buying my favourites, and I was hooked on a quest to find more.

Having these photos in my hands, I imagined the lives of the people, not only who were featured in them, but who took them. One photo was of the Louvre, dated 1984. The next was of a rickety bridge in the Caribbean. One appears to be a woman sewing her cat. Suddenly, I had access to all these moments that must have been important enough to someone at some point in time that they felt the need to document a person or place.

I visited the store once every couple months for about three years, never leaving without a new stack of photographs. I once asked the owner where she got them all from, she said they were often tucked into books, or she would get boxes of books from estate sales with full photo albums mixed in. About a year after my first bookstore visit, I started checking in photo albums in thrift stores. I’ve now collected over 500 personal photographs – the oldest from the 1930s, the latest from the early 2000s.

Around the same time as I discovered the bookstore, I also started shooting my own 35mm film. Armed with a Pentax K1000, I wandered the streets of my new home of Toronto, and soon, had to find somewhere to get all that film developed. Quickly, the excitement of dropping off film, and having to wait for resulting images, was something I grew attached, and really looked forward to.

One day, while out at a thrift store, I opened up a camera bag and found two exposed rolls of film. I had an overwhelming urge to know that was on them, and couldn’t wait to drop them off for developing. I got back about 50 photos of a wedding, discoloured, but with an incredible story to tell. In the last year, I’ve found about 25 rolls of film. Only half of them have been developed with successful results. Although it can become an expensive hobby, the anticipation and the results have been worth it for me.

Although some people have found this hobby a bit strange, I often feel responsible in a way for saving these things that may have otherwise been destroyed. Especially with undeveloped film, there are no second copies of those photos, of those moments, and once those moments are gone, they’re gone forever. If I can preserve even one photo, one meaningful moment of someone’s life, that’s worth it to me.

NOTE: If you happened recognize anyone in these photos, please contact us and we will try to connect you with the photos.