On Time and Broken Cameras

Objects are important to me. That’s not to say that I’m a materialist or a collector, but a keeper; a curator; a conservator; a guardian of that which holds personal and sentimental meaning. And despite this long and winding explanation, I return to my starting point: Objects are important to me.

Well, certain objects are.

Three years ago I purchased a second film camera; a little point and shoot that I found online in early 2020 after doing extensive research on sellers, buyer experiences, and user reviews. Finally, after weeks of research, I received my Yashica T4 Super. With a Carl Zeiss lens and a simple-to-use aesthetic, this camera is literally the point and shoot for all point and shoots. Perhaps that’s what drew me to it in the first place. This overt simplicity made shooting film effortless and somewhat thoughtless—I could take the camera out, capture the moment, and return it to my bag with an ease that made ‘getting the shot’ a given rather than a gamble.

I was hooked before I finished my first roll of film.

For three years this thing came everywhere with me. This thing, which started out as just a thing, became more than an object over time. It held meaning and became an extension of myself; a way to capture fleeting moments in time that would otherwise be lost in the haze of my memory. And yet, as I reflect on all this camera has seen and done over the last three years, I can’t help but ruminate on the brutal reality that this camera is no longer in working order. It jammed in March and, given its age, is virtually unrepairable. In a matter of moments, this camera reverted back to what it used to be: an object. A mere thing among a collection of things. “What now?” I thought to myself as I placed the camera onto a shelf.

This memory flooded my conscience the other night as I shared the early part of this essay with J. “What now?” I asked, referring not to the camera but to the four pages of unused text that had accumulated at the end of my Pages document. Ironically, I felt as tough I was at a loss for words and painfully unable to write. Perhaps I was writing about the wrong thing.

Perhaps I was writing about the camera as a thing—an object—rather than the camera as a metaphor for what lies deeper into the core of my being. My melancholia is not the product of an inanimate object’s passing but rather the passage of time. My camera’s ‘death’ was a reminder of the latter. Ironically, this was the camera’s sole purpose—to memorialize the passage of time and this is what, for three short years, distinguished this object from certain objects in my collection. Today, I gaze at this camera sitting quietly on its shelf and reminisce about a time when this object was more than an object; it was a tool to capture brief moments in time, even if just fleeting milliseconds.