zachary wright

A retiring photographer sold me 200 rolls of 20-year-expired Kodak Elite Chrome. For a while it was just film I had to shoot. I tested and dabbled and did it wrong on purpose until I found something that worked, and kept going without knowing what I was making.

My job puts me on the road. This is the work after work, what happens once the job is done and the night begins. Wherever I land I find the same thing: strangers who become friends, friends who become strangers, and the hours spent in the in-between.

When I walk into a room I look for the light before I look for anyone. Sometimes it takes twenty seconds. Sometimes twenty minutes. Then I wait. Mostly it isn't can I take your picture — it's a conversation, a beer, a smoke outside. When someone poses I tell them not yet, just be yourself, I'll get it when it's right. Then they cross the mark and I fire. Every frame is a single exposure. I drag the shutter and paint with the camera while it's open. Nothing is layered or added after.

The light does the rest. It masks a face. It fills the empty chair next to a man drinking alone. It takes up the half of the frame an old man isn't standing in. It erases people and it draws the room around them.

We are always alone in rooms full of people. And then we find each other. Almost nobody asks how to see the photo. A bartender in Fresno bought us a round for taking her picture and never asked my name.

Three things landed at once. Years of experiments I'd been running without a subject. This film. And my grandfather passed in 2023 after a years-long battle with dementia. Watching him lose the record of his own life turned the question of losing my mind from if into when. Who would remember the things I'd done, and the time I'd spent with people who made me feel alive? Everything made sense in a new way.

In ordinary life a second passes unnoticed. You lose thousands of them a day. I get to carry these for as long as I can. This is about staying longer in the fractions of seconds where I truly feel like I belong.

I photograph things we have all seen, places we have all been, people we all know. Someone on roller skates. Someone doing something stupid. Someone drinking a beer out of a pitcher. A face you recognize but can't place. Maybe that takes you somewhere. You remember what you ate. Who you were with. Steve. Then you remember Dave doesn't know Steve. They should meet. Then you're thinking about the time that car got crushed at the demolition derby.

I have about twenty rolls left. The project ends when the film does. There is no more of this film and no way to get back what twenty years did to it.

I didn't have photo books. I had records. Jim Marshall, Francis Wolff, Henry Diltz. Access can't create these moments. Only trust can.