An Initiation into Film Photography via my Father

In June 2018, whilst developing my skills in digital photography - exploring the nuances of what it means to not only take photos, but to stage a photo, build a relationship with your subject, and find the right moment to capture - my father gifted me his old Olympus OM-10 SLR, a fantastic, if a little battered, piece of equipment. Inside of it was a roll of undeveloped and - I assumed - unused film. I proceeded to shoot a selection of individuals across several locations in London and Bristol, and duly sent my film off to be developed. When the roll was returned to me I discovered not only that my assumptions had been incorrect, my father had indeed shot on the roll, but that his photography and my own had overlapped - literally through the double exposure process, and thematically - to create a series of photos that transcended the individual photographs, creating a theme that not only defined this collection, but my summer as a whole. The timelines are over 15 years apart, and yet the themes are constant. I found myself both astounded and mesmerised by the what I called at the time 'The Gods of Photography' smiling down upon me. Now I realise that this was far more than that; it was the hopes and aspirations of a father being passed down to his son, culminating in a truly mesmerising shared vision of what the power of a photograph can be.