Film photography has lately been enjoying a renaissance around the world, as a whole new generation is discovering the benefits of analogue cameras. There is a certain charm to shooting on film; as you only have 35 – or even 12 – frames, you must carefully compose each shot and think twice before cocking the shutter. But afterwards, those 35 well conceived photographs are worth a lot more than 100 pictures of the same thing on your phone.
As a professional photographer, Kristóf Váczi saw firsthand how digital photography completely replaced analogue in the 2000s. Then he also saw analogue slowly sneaking back into the limelight. With his business partner, Anett Kaposvári, they started selling Lomography products in 2010 in Budapest and later opened Café Analogue on Kazinczy Street. The demand for their products is now higher day by day. They think this is because over the past eight years, a generation has grown up who never used film cameras before. For them, celluloid is something exotic. Basically, young people brought analogue photography back to life.
Naturally, the range of customers is colourful: everyone from a 60-year-old professional photographer to a camera buff with a Leica worth thousands. Nowadays, magazines, too, are starting to realize that the difference between digital and analogue pictures can be huge. Café Analogue has a customer who shoots on film in London and sends the rolls to Budapest to be developed and scanned.
There is a certain skill needed for film photography. “Your camera won’t do it for you, you have to do it yourself,” – says Anett. She adds that phones today take just as decent photos as digital cameras, so a film camera can always be used for fun at the same time. Kristóf and Anett have countless customers overseas in Australia, England and Switzerland.
Now they have made a long-term dream come true and opened a new place, ArtBázis Összművészeti Műhely, a lab and venue for workshops on Horánszky Street. “Our real dream was to be able to enter the new place from the Kazinczy Street store, but in the basement here we could only grow fungus or rice as it is full of water.” – laughs Anett.
According to current plans, the lab will be available to rent for an hourly rate and workshops will be advertised in advance. Art Bázis is also home to a hundred-year-old Goldmann wooden camera that Kristóf and Anett turned into a “Polaroid camera from the 1800s” and have already tried it out at a wedding. It was a massive success.
Another specialty at the lab is the huge scanner that was used by newspapers to scan film in olden days. This machine provides the best quality available at the moment. It is quite rare today – you won't even find one in the basements of old editorial offices any more.
