I’ve posted recently about expired film, and also about skate photography, and today’s post combines the two. The following photos were shot on Kodak Max 400 (expired in 2008) at a small DIY in Richmond. I already had this film loaded in my camera (Minolta X-700) and killed off the last few frames, realizing I haven’t shot much skate on expired film before, if at all.
One of the things I love about photographing skate is the nineties nostalgia. Visit any skate spot and find skaters in wide-leg jeans and oversized t-shirts reminiscent of mid-nineties fashion. I was fourteen years old in 1995, and my brother and I were the first kids at our high school to rock the massively-legged JNCOs that soon overtook the denim zeitgeist. We paired them with boxy band tees, Hawaiian shirts, and pierced eyebrows.
Last spring I was standing along the perimeter at Texas Beach skate park, camera in hand, waiting for the right shot to come whizzing into frame, when I found myself transported back to my adolescence—all around me, boys in baggy jeans, and blaring tinnily from a portable speaker connected to someone’s iPhone, a playlist of Rage Against the Machine and Nirvana.
I like the worn quality of expired film, the softness of the images similar to the faded graphic on a thrifted tee, how it makes you think of the year it was meant to be used. There’s a timelessness to film photographs, and to culture that pervades multiple decades, a sense that no matter where you are in time and space, you can show up and see that you have a place there.
Thanks for reading, you’re beautiful.