We live in a time when film photography and digital photography coexist, living side by side. But a certain tradeoff exists: the instant gratification of taking, editing, and posting a multitude of photos on the fly creates an abundant wealth of images where once the trip is over, are never really revisited, unless it's for the Instagram. Meanwhile, film is slow. It's a process. You don't know what the picture really looks like when you take it, you just have to hope for the best. The delayed gratification of film photography thus renders a greater appreciation of moments and places when you finally get your developed photos back. Having been a long-time fan of disposable cameras and the ephemeral, yet timeless, way in which places/people/moments are depicted in this medium, I have witnessed the tragic decline of these cameras over the years in the age of smartphone photography. In this photo-series that I embarked on in Spring 2016 in New York City, I wanted to place these two forces side by side, photographing the same location at virtually the same time situated in the modern era, but divided temporally by the medium of technology used to document the location: iPhone and disposable camera. I want to demonstrate the certain drama and tension that unfolds between two types of technology: one that is slowly but surely becoming obsolete, and one that is certainly part of the mainstream. The juxtaposition of the same locations using two different kinds of technology demonstrates the inherently different ways that things are framed when using different lenses, and when the same thing is framed differently, that leads to differences in the interpretations of and nostalgia that images can evoke.
