Filmneverdie Shooters - An interview with Jacinta Keefe

So, where do you come from & what do you do for a living?

Born and raised in Melbourne, but spent a lot of time traveling between Melbourne and a small rural town in NSW, Condobolin, where the rest of my family live. 

I just finished studying and established a business for casual work during my final year of study, so I’m hopefully going to get it off the ground this year.

How old are you?

Twenty-one

How did you become inspired to shoot on film?

I think it goes back to high school, although I never shot a great deal of film back then, my teacher he told me I had to start on film before I even thought of touching a digital camera, and you know what, I’m so glad that’s how I started, taught me a solid foundation and began my love for black and white photography.  However it didn’t all come from school, both my Dad and Granddad did photography when they were younger and I just loved hearing some of the stories and looking at the old photographs that they used to take.

What format do you shoot? 35mm, Polaroid, 8 x 10 etc

I started shooting 35mm but for my most recent work I had the joy of using a Pentax 6x7 and fell in love with medium format, but Polaroid 600 and Fuji pack films have become my most common format to shoot. I never go anywhere without some kind of Polaroid in my bag be it my Polaroid Land, box type or Instax Wide/Mini I just love them so much.

Why do you like this format?

Where to begin! When I was 6 I had my birthday at the local McDonalds and when it was time to cut the birthday cake everyone bunched around and the party staff took this photo on a Polaroid and watching it develop was one of the greatest things ever. It blew my mind as a child, since then I’ve wanted a Polaroid camera ever since. It was the first physical photograph I owned.

I finally got a camera in 2013.  Since then I’ve grown to love the notion that we live in a very digital age, people no longer have photo albums, when we talk about a photo album, people usually mean the photos they’ve posted on Facebook, but a polaroid gives you something physical, tangible within a few seconds of shooting. Sure the image from older films might not be there immediately but with Fuji Packfilm or Instax mini/wide it’s there, instantly and portable. People are always amazed when I pull the camera out and it spits out a photo right after, for some people they’ve never seen a Polaroid, it’s a great conversation starter!

I also love the sheer magic of when you show a kid a Polaroid, the look on their face is always priceless.

Where do you see the future of analogue photography?

Oh, hmm I’m not sure, the current major resurgence of film is wonderful, I was hording rolls of film for quite a while back, half my fridge is packed with film, you can’t get to anything without a roll of film or a box of polaroid film rolling around in front of you…

I know that for myself, Fujifilm discontinuing FP-3000B was a sad day in 2014, however I haven’t had a bad time finding stock, (thanks to you guys) but I know that will eventually run out and I’ll be left with just color – not necessarily a bad thing, but their black and white is truly beautiful stuff.  I was hopping that with the spike in popularity that it might have been picked up by Impossible, I know they were looking at it, but no word has been said on it for a while now.

I think analogue photography will be around for a long time, it wont totally go out of production, I mean Kodak just brought back the Super 8 and super 8 films. Film is not dying like people said 5 years ago that’s for sure.  Hopefully it’s only going up from here, groups like Lomography and Impossible Project and even you guys, have certainly helped keep things going and I only hope things get better!

Where can we find out more about your work?

You can find my work in a few different places:

Portfolio: www.jacintakeefe.4ormat.com
Blog: www.jmkdesignsandphotography.com

Film dedicated blog: www.complexchemicalreactions.tumblr.com