Meet Your Photoworks Staff

Thought I’d introduce some of the people who make it all happen at Photoworks. Starting with our youngest employee who frankly is lucky to be getting paid. I tried to sucker him into an intern program, but he demanded to be compensated monetarily. Normally I have little respect for anyone born in The Eighties, but Alex is a solid citizen with a “big” future, despite the fact that he fabricated his resume. The only truth below is that he was born in Simi Valley in 1985. The rest is bullshit, he’s actually a runaway who I found sleeping in the alley behind Photoworks. Meet Alex….

Name: Alex Martinez
Born: Feb 1st, 1985
Birthplace: Simi Valley, CA
Worked At Photoworks Since: July, 2007
Before that? Getting my BA in Anthropology at San Francisco State
University, with a focus on visual anthropology and documentary
photography.
Film or digital? Film, 35mm mostly, but just got a medium format
camera and have been enjoying 120.
Gear: Nikon F100, Fuji GA645, Yashica T4. For film I shoot Kodak
Portra NC, and Ilford HP5+.
When Not At Photoworks: Interning at Hamburger Eyes Photo Epicenter,
exploring the Bay Area, spending too much time on the internet.
Most important question, matte or glossy? Any borders? Matte, clean
white borders. Always.
Website: http://www.stopinternetromance.com/

Abandoned Photos

You take a dream vacation, take lots of photos, bring them to a photolab, and never pick them up. Seems odd, but it happens all the time. About 10% of film and digital images ordered never get picked up. There are lots of reasons: people forget, don’t have money, lose interest in the subject matter, leave town, die………. Sometimes these photos are market “urgent” or “rush” because at the time it’s a freakin’ big deal. I have photos of babies being born, kids parties, Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, funerals, naked people, dog portraits, burning man crap, actor headshots, artwork, and everything under the sun.

I can see losing interest in a digital order since it’s on someone’s computer. But negatives and prints??? This is not dry cleaning! And by the way, we make every effort to contact the owners of the photos, and some people do eventually collect their property, but I have pictures here from The Eighties.

So, here’s my idea: I’m thinking of putting together a photoshow of a bunch of the ‘left behind and abandoned” photos. A random collection of the stuff people decided was once important enough to photograph, but not important enough to pay the proprietor of the photolab for his developing services. Is this an invasion of privacy?? Hell yes, but obviously someone doesn’t care enough to protect themselves.

Maybe you will see someone you know on the walls of my shop and let them know that they have film waiting to be picked up. Maybe it’s a picture of you on the beach, or in Paris, or getting stoned in the park, or maybe it’s a shot of an ex-girlfriend from a happy time in your life, or maybe it’s a photo of your old cat, or your old Mustang convertible, or even your Mom and Dad……….

Remember prints?

I don’t want to sound like a winy photolab owner, but I am a winy photolab owner, and I’m sore about this subject. Why don’t we make prints like we used to? Now, I get the whole idea with digital photography is that it encourages self-reliance, but I’ll agrue that printing at home does not do good images justice. I’ve got the greatest printing technology in the world, right here on Market St, and yet there are billions of images out there stuck on hard drives. I’m worried without a physical record that these important images will be deleted not just from computers, but from memory (brain). Hey, this is why we keep shoeboxes! To me, unearthing an old photo from the closet beats finding something on a subfolder, within a subfolder. Do we only want to leave a digital record behind?? There is nothing like the tactile sensation of holding, and touching a photographic image. I don’t want my son rubbing his fingers on an image of me on a laptop 50 years from now. Besides electronic images don’t fade, and where’s the fun in that?