Where have the masters gone?
Over recent months Ive become increasingly confused, maybe even a little disappointed. The great film photographers, the ones who built their reputations one carefully exposed frame at a time, seem to have left the very medium they became masters of. These are the names that shaped photography as we know it. The ones who made magic with a Leica, a Hasselblad, or a Nikon F3 like the one I still carry with pride.
And yet, most of them now shoot digital. Some have even become evangelists for it. That in itself isn’t the issue, digital has its place and thats why I use a OMD-EM1 and D2X. But what troubles me is how many seem to speak of film in the past tense, as though it were a curiosity, a stepping stone to something “better.” Some even say its inconvenient and that digital is jusr ‘easier’, to which I say “since when was photofraphy meant to be easy?”
There’s a reason I still carry my Nikon F3. It’s not nostalgia. It’s not even loyalty. It’s because that camera, that machine, slows me down, grounds me, makes me think. Every shot counts. Every frame has weight. I look through the viewfinder and I mean it.
Im sorry to have to tell people this but black and white film is organic in a way digital can never truly be. It breathes. It ages. It reacts to light and time and temperature. The grain isn’t noise it’s texture. The limits of film aren’t obstacles they’re part of the discipline. They make you better.
What’s ironic is that while the masters move on, the young are coming back. Teenagers are buying point-and-shoots on eBay. Students are loading rolls of Tri-X like it’s something sacred because to them, it is. They’re discovering that film is more than a look; it’s a way of seeing.
These young photographers look to the greats, hoping to find guidance. But too often now, their heroes are shooting digital. Full-frame mirrorless. Autofocus so fast it predicts the future. Ten thousand frames to sort through later.
That’s not necessarily wrong. Artists evolve. But I wonder did the greats leave film behind because it became inconvenient? Or because they had nothing left to learn from it? I still learn something every time I load a roll in my F3. Not just about photography but about patience, trust, and commitment.
Maybe the masters have moved on. But maybe it’s our turn now those of us still drawn to the smell of developer, to the satisfying clunk of a shutter that means something. Maybe the baton has passed quietly. And that’s okay.
The medium isn’t dead. It’s just waiting in the fridge, in our cameras, in the quiet hum of a lab scanner for those who still care enough to listen.
A Controversial Thought…
Next time you hear a seasoned photographer lament that contact prints were the best way to understand how a photographer thought and worked and that this insight is now lost, ask them this: Why did you choose to embrace digital, a medium that took you further away from the very film that shaped you into the photographer you are today?