Caption text: The old camera only had thirty pictures left on the roll of 35mm film when I bought it. Didn’t think much of it at the time. I was just glad to get some free film.
When I finally found somewhere that still developed film many months later, it was a bit of a fight to get them to send all of the photos back. At first, I thought it was a scam and – in retrospect – I’m not proud of some of the things I said to them. But I got my photos back eventually… and I wish I hadn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, all of the “vintage” photos I took were superb, but I’d forgotten about the other photos from before I got the camera. God, they are weird!
Still, I don’t know if it’s just the modern world, but I feel a strange urge to share them with all of you….
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Image One: A grainy vertical photograph of three people in a circular concrete or stone tunnel of some kind, lit by the harsh glow of a single inspection lamp. There is a man with spiky black hair wearing a grey trench-coat, a blonde woman wearing a plaid shirt and jeans, and an older bald man wearing glasses and a tweed suit. The three of them are smiling towards the camera and pointing to a dark green or red door in the shadows behind them.
Flecks of moss cover the smooth grey walls of the tunnel. Closer inspection reveals that, despite the smoothness of the walls, there are none of the lines you would expect from a modular concrete tunnel. The whole thing seems to just be one continuous tube, built in a single piece.
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Image Two: A bold, saturated vertical photograph from inside what appears to be a large hall-sized greenhouse, made out of red stained glass. There is almost something church-like about the construction of the room, yet – whilst it certainly has the grandeur you would expect from a cathedral – there are no religious symbols or iconography in sight.
The camera has been angled upwards slightly in order to fit in the cavernous ceiling into view – with the bold glow from behind each crimson panel presumably coming from a hidden skylight or mirror tunnel of some kind. The slight bulges, warps and imperfections in the panels seem to suggest that they were created before modern manufacturing technology, or electrical lighting, existed.
Looking at the bottom right of the image, you can see the head of what appears to be an alabaster statue turned rose-pink by the light. Its face has been worn completely smooth, reflecting a mottled pattern of red light. To the left of it, the top half of the spiky-haired man can be seen holding up an ornate golden cup of some kind whilst the blonde woman writes in a notebook and the older man fumbles with a satchel of some kind. They are all smiling.
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Image Three: A wide horizontal photograph of the red glass hall. This is a more conventional photograph, taken from a level angle, with no-one in frame. There are eight alabaster statues, little more than featureless pillars, arranged in two rows of four. Through the corridor between them, a large oblong of pale marble – almost an altar of sorts – can be seen at the far end of the hall.
At the sides of the hall, there are more of the marble altars. Although the angle of the shot and the grain of the film makes it difficult to difficult to discern what exactly has been placed on top of them, the reflections would indicate that the objects are metallic. What appears to be a small archway or door of some kind is visible in the far left corner of the hall.
The tiled floor below is made out of the same pale stone as the statues. The ruby light from the warped glass panels casts a strange uneven pattern on it which could, at first glance, be mistaken for a medical photograph of a skin disease. Despite the red light, there is something cold about the stone below.
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Image Four: A vertical photograph of a bright hallway corner, walled entirely by thick blue glass panels. One of the panels is cracked, the dark jagged lines spreading out like veins. The spiky-haired man rests against one of the other walls. He is no longer wearing his trench-coat. The right sleeve of his shirt is rolled up and a crude grey bandage can be seen around his arm, the trails of blood below it turned dark purple-black by the blue light.
The older man is nowhere to be seen. The blonde woman is trying to smile at the camera, but there is a tension and a sadness in her eyes. She clutches what appears to be a dented golden sceptre of some kind, the metal turned pale green by the surrounding light. The shadows in the dent seem deeper than they should be, their edges rough and uneven. It could just be the grain of the film, or the sceptre could be stained with something. Impossible to tell.
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Image Five: A horizontal photograph of a medium-sized blue-glass room. Unlike the other rooms, this one seems to have been moulded entirely out of glass, with the centre of the sapphire floor rising up into what appears to be a fountain of some kind.
There is something almost organic about its shape and lines, reminiscent of a Venus fly-trap plant. It could just be the reflections, but there appears to be a faint trickle of water dribbling from the uneven glass pipe in the centre.
Although no-one is visible in frame, there is a discarded notebook next to the wall in the bottom left of the image. The handwritten text is too far away from the camera to be readable and the bottom half of the page appears to be saturated with spilled ink. Though, in the light, it is difficult to tell for certain.
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Image Six: A low horizontal photograph, taken close to the floor of what appears to be a large green-glass cavern. Almost like the inside of a wine bottle. Given the natural light filtering through the glass, it appears the photographer neglected to use the flash.
What initially appears to be a flat rock formation can be seen silhouetted in the close foreground to the left of the picture, however the short spiky hairs barely visible on one side suggest something far more unsettling.
On the bottom right edge of the picture, one of the photographer’s fingers can be seen. It is unclear whether the black line at the edge of it is a limitation of the film format or whether the finger had been severed.
In the distance, silhouetted people can be seen dancing in a circle, with one in the centre. Given the light and the distance, it is impossible to make out any details. The dancers’ arms are raised and, from the outlines, they appear to be wearing ceremonial head-wear of some kind. None of their heads look like human heads, with jagged points and edges jutting out at all sorts of strange angles.
In the centre of the circle, what appears to be a man with three arms raises a perfectly spherical object aloft towards a point of light at the pinnacle of the cavern.
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