[Leica] Film still lives even in Burma

[scott at adrenaline.com (Scott McLoughlin)]

Man, I'd love to party with this guy for a few months. I imagine it's
amazing what one can do with one developer/one film same process
day in and day out for a few years.

Scott

Christopher Williams wrote:

>>From PMA news:
>
>"Burmese photographer uses traditional and homemade techniques for tourist
>snaps"
>
>
>"Burmese photographer Sein Win has spent the last 35 years recording
>tourists on 35mm film, the Bangkok Post reports. As tourists approach the
>Shwezigon Pagoda in Bagan, Burma, via a long covered walkway, they encounter
>Sein Win's darkroom among an array of souvenir stalls. Sein Win comes out
>clutching his 1970s vintage Ricoh camera. Within minutes, tourists are
>shepherded into the grounds of the pagoda while Sein Win takes photos
>against the golden spires. He takes seven shots, getting different angles
>and view points. Then it's off to the darkroom, a small wooden cubicle
>measuring approximately a square metre. Here the seven frames of film are
>removed from the camera and wound into the spiral of his developing tank.
>  Temperatures inside the room are frequently well in excess of 100 degrees
>Fahrenheit, which is why the film develops so fast, the article says. The
>hotter the chemicals, the shorter the developing time. Developed, fixed, and
>dried with a hair dryer in about three minutes. "See,'' he says, "no
>computer, no minilab. Just me and my developing tank."
>  Then the strip of film is inserted into his homemade enlarger which
>consists of a tin can containing a light bulb with a lens attached to the
>base of the can. Sein Win doesn't use a clock to time the exposures or a
>thermometer to measure the temperature of the developer. Both the film and
>the prints are developed in the same solution. Then, within another three
>minutes, just as the sign in the front of his cubicle claims, the prints are
>done to a turn, the article says. While the emulsion on the surface of the
>paper is still soft, he etches a personal message onto the image with a nail
>before the prints are dried with the hair dryer and presented to the
>client."
>
>
>Chris
>
>
>
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