Only once before in his life did Rolando Caceres bet everything on film photography. It was 1994, and development labs were on every street corner in Los Angeles. Getting into the business seemed like a sure bet.
More than a decade later, though, the gray in Caceres’ beard was all about stress—he was on the brink of losing everything. Digital photography had burst onto the photo scene, leaving Caceres and the store he started over a decade earlier on life support. He went from developing around one hundred rolls a day to just two or three, if he was lucky. Digital cameras were the technology of the future.
By all accounts, Caceres and his shop, Gold One Hour Photo, should have packed up and left his dinky storefront in a Koreatown strip mall as soon as the financial crisis hit. Film photography was already suffering, and Caceres had sold most of his scanners, lost nearly all his customers, and parted ways with his staff and business partner.
“I was thinking ‘I'm old already, what am I going to do? Who’s going to hire me? Do I have to look for a job?’ It was really bad. I was in a depression,” Caceres remembered.
For the second time in his life, he bet everything on film photography. And for the second time in his life, his bet paid off.
After years of bad news for the industry, film is making a comeback. The Harman Technology Company, makers of Ilford Black and White Photo Film, reported a 5% increase in sales in 2017, Fujifilm cashed in on the trend with its popular Instax Instant Camera, and Kodak, the formerly bankrupt giant once responsible for a majority of the photographic film market, decided to bring back the popular Ektachrome 100 film last year.
So why the revival? For some Gen Z-ers, there’s a kind of imaginary nostalgia for an easier, older time that attracts younger generations en masse.
“I think that digital makes the past look too perfect sometimes. I think that analog photography and film photography emphasizes the imperfection, the oldness of your past memories. So with the grain and stuff, it seems like it did happen in the past. It is an old memory,” said Fiona Pestana, a USC junior and Gold Photo customer.
For others, the process of digital photography grew too wearisome—film’s simplicity and limits are more appealing.
“Honestly, I'm kind of sick of taking photos on my phone camera,” another Gold customer and USC junior, JD LeRoy, said. He appreciates the limitations film has. “I had my DSLR at the time and I was getting frustrated with the process because I was just taking so many photos. I just wanted to slow down a little bit.”
Of course, there’s the draw from pop culture because of the aesthetic that film can bring to an Instagram feed, as Dexter Hake, a climbing coach in Oakland, explained.
“I'm sure it doesn't help that Drake was caught with a [Contax] T3 and then Kylie Jenner had a [Contax] T2 or something,” Hake said.
All of this means film is here to stay for the time being—just check out #FilmIsNotDead on Instagram for proof.
When asked about the future, Caceres is quick to mention it wasn’t always like this.
Sticking to his guns
Caceres, 59, came to America from Honduras in 1985 with a wish to make a life for himself, and he had no return trip planned. He heard stories about Los Angeles from his brothers who were already there and made the 3,000-mile journey on a wing and a prayer.
Upon landing in L.A. with the hundreds of thousands of other immigrants in the 1980s, he did what he knew best and got a job at Rose Photo, a film development lab on 7th and Vermont. Having dropped out of college in Honduras and gone straight to a film lab to support his family, developing and processing dozens of negatives every day was not only what he was best at. It was all Caceres knew.
At Rose Photo, Caceres learned about the industry and how to develop negatives to customers’ exact specifications. He saw the passion people had for photography and film, and he witnessed the care with which they treated their negatives and prints. Although he knew his way around a camera, he never considered himself a photographer. He was always a developer, even to this day.
Caceres realized he had a chance to make something out of the talent he had, and after eight years of hard work at Rose, he decided it was time to change his wish into a dream. In 1994, he and another employee from the lab pooled together nearly $100,000 and started Gold One Hour Photo, two blocks from their former shop.
“I had a lot of experience; I knew a lot of people, so people who used to go [Rose] started coming here. We started pretty good, actually,” Caceres recalled. “We started making payments for everything, even our building. So we didn't start bad, like other businesses it sometimes takes six months to pay the rent.”
If opening a business wasn’t enough for 1994, a few months earlier, Caceres’ only son, Andreas, was born. For a while, life was good. Gold Photo was developing up to 100 rolls each day, Caceres took on a few employees to help with demand, and bought a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Reseda for his family. After living with his brothers and renting various apartments, he finally put down roots and completed the classic American dream.
No matter how hard Caceres worked in his lab though, the urge to innovate was stronger. Engineers at companies like Nikon, Fujifilm and Canon were developing and planning the mass-production of digital cameras, and inventors at Samsung and Nokia were putting those same cameras in their phones.
By 2003, digital cameras outstripped film cameras in sales, and the following year, ten years after Gold Photo opened, Kodak announced it would no longer sell film cameras.
This was the beginning of what many saw as the end for film, recalled Gold Photo employe Jorge Cruz.
“Most people lost their jobs because they were old dogs. You know, they couldn't handle the computer,” Cruz said. “They gave you a few months to catch up. And if not, then next, because, you know, just there were kids coming out of college with it already.”
“I remember the 512 megabyte cards,” he added. “They were like $500 and I was shooting with a little [Canon] Rebel camera and that was top of the line, high quality stuff.”
Although Cruz made the jump to digital, Caceres stuck with what he knew.
Film labs in the Los Angeles Area
Film has made one of its biggest comebacks in the city of hipsters, compared to other places across the country. Currently in LA, there's competition amongst shops when it comes to developing and scanning, especially in the Hollywood area. New labs pop up every year, further establishing film's grip on the city's residents.
This map compares 15 of the most popular labs in the area.
A slow descent
By the time the Great Recession had swept the nation, Gold Photo was a shell of its former self. Down from 100 rolls a day to maybe ten on a good day, Caceres sold all but one of his machines for scrap metal, let all but one of his staff members go, and bought out his former partner’s share in the business for pennies on the dollar.
“It was really bad. We were doing nothing here. Kind of sleepy, just waiting. But customers didn't show up. It was really slow, before we were five people working. Then we went down to just me and another guy. I was planning to just fire him because there was nothing to do,” Caceres said.
Life wasn’t any better at home. Caceres put the house he worked so hard for on the market, Andreas’ mother left him, and the son that grew up with the lab didn’t understand why his father couldn’t leave it.
“When we sold the house,” Caceras said, “that was really painful for him. He had a lot of friends around. And that's what he remembered. I mean, this place is a home. But we didn't have any choice. We had to do it.”
In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy, a warning sign for film everywhere. Smaller producers that couldn’t declare bankruptcy easily, like Lomography, a vintage camera and film store with a large online presence, struggled along.
“I’m not going to lie: It's not always been easy for the company,” said Birgit Buchart, General Manager of Lomography U.S.A. “There was a time when digital was taking over and when people genuinely thought that's going to be the end for analog photography. I think our board members, which are our founders of the company, just never really gave up on the belief that film photography will have its value.”
Empty cannisters and negative containers fill trash cans at Gold Photo.
Back in business
Like Buchart, Caceres never gave up on his belief either. They were ahead of their time, appreciating the finer qualities of film photography like the kind of grain and tonal range photographers can only achieve naturally through film stock like Portra 400 and Ilford HP5, before the masses followed suit.
That love for the style, along with more than a bit of stubbornness, kept him going back to his lab, day in, day out. He persisted, taking passport photos, printing digital camera photos and developing the occasional roll of film for the few hold outs left.
For reasons beyond Caceres, as quick as digital wiped it out, film was back, and more popular than ever before. Finally, 20 years after he opened the shop, customers started coming back in droves and business tripled what it was back in 1994.
No matter what the reason is for the influx in film users, many are benefiting.
“[2014] was when we also came out with our first instant cameras. And that was the first big mainstream boost,” Buchart said. “So we could see that all of a sudden we weren't only targeting our community and people who were familiar with us, but instant photography went into every household, like young teenagers wanted to have instant photos for their parties. Families wanted to have it for special occasions. And that was the first time we saw that with digital being so present in our everyday lives.”
After buying back all the machines he previously sold, Caceres started hiring again. For the second time, photography saved another believer.
Jorge Cruz is the first person customers see at the lab.
Filling the gaps
Before coming to Gold Photo, Jorge Cruz had worked as a photojournalist for wire services like Getty and Reuters, taking pictures at events around the world. He thought he was living the dream. But it wasn’t long before he was deep into drugs and alcohol, sleeping in his car.
Even when a friend reached out to Cruz with a job offer from Gold Photo, he blew it off and didn’t show up for the interview. Caceres knew the power of a second chance however, and after his friend insisted, Cruz went in for an interview. It’s been two years now, and although he moved out of his car into a motel room less than a year ago, he’s around what he loves.
“That's why I work here, because it's photography related. It keeps me close to where I like. I talk to people about their work and to me, that's interesting. To me, that’s fun,” Cruz explained. “This is one of those jobs that you do because you like it, not because of the money—because there is no money. But it does something that fulfills the gap that I have right now in my life.”
Photography had asked everything and more from Caceres and Cruz, then took it all away. But they are survivors, and photography has given back to them once again.
Caceres continues to work, even during the COVID-19 pandemic—it’s all he knows how to do. As the neighboring stores around him are shuttering their windows, he refuses to be hit by another slump. After taking film orders through their mail slot during April and using Instagram to get the word out, Caceres has opened his shop back up again.
It’s difficult for Caceres to go through such tough times and simply forget it. Those years of living paycheck-to-paycheck are always at the back of Caceres’ mind, and he feels like he’s living on borrowed time. Seeing everything from fellow film labs to massive retail stores closing their doors is not the best omen either.
“I feel sorry when that happens because they hire people, and then people lose their jobs. We worry too, ‘Oh, if they close, we may be the next ones.’ Who knows?” Caceres asked.
It’s only when he lifts his head up does he pause to wonder.
“Sometimes I think, ‘How did we get here?’ From the stage that I was to this now, I’m actually even better now than I used to be before,” Caceres said. “I’m by myself and now I don't have to share 50% like before. I ask my son because we're buying a house just now. I say to him, ‘How did we get here?’”