“The most important element of the camera sits 12 inches behind it”. Quote from one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, Ansel Adams, opens the short documentary by Wojciech Gostomczyk, an artist from Bydgoszcz.
It’s a specific movie because it doesn’t depict a story of one particular hero. It is a tale about a group of fascinates, who share the passion for analog photography and sharing this passion with others during the annual photographic plein-airs in Michałowice near Jelenia Góra, Poland. Fascination with the world of Polaroids, old, nearly 100-year-old large format cameras and the first reporter cameras becomes obvious for the viewer as well. Observing how in the privacy of the darkroom, like in the alchemist’s studio, a photographic image emerges from the darkness, we can feel the excitement that photographing gave in the beginning of its existence. In a flood of digital images that attack our senses every day, the one-of-a-kind unique Polaroid shot, captured on film and photographic paper gains a magical meaning…