‘You only have one shot’: how film cameras won over a younger generation

She has grown up in an age of instant, infinitely sharable images. For her, the magic of photo booths was exactly the opposite of the magic they’d held for me in my youth. Instead of being a fleeting glimpse of a futuristic world of fast images, for her, they were now a nostalgic relic for a slower, more private era.

In the end, to move through the world is to experience encounters that constantly pass us by, and to brush up against moments that we are not able to save other than as an unreliable memory. The increasing popularity of apps like BeReal that capture those moments—rather than try to contain and display them—seems to reflect an embrace of life’s flee... See more

Maybe I’m naive. Maybe all generations look back with nostalgia. But my sense is they don’t do it for a time they never knew . They feel a longing for their youth; their childhood. My parents might flick through black-and-white photos and hear stories from my grandparents and feel intrigued, but not so much grief. I think there is something distinc... See more