Vending Machine
May 25, 2024
I walked past this disposable camera/film roll vending machine last night when my girlfriend and I were walking the dog. There used to be a C-Store here, but sometime in the last few months it disappeared and photography shop opened up in its place.
There was a moment of excitement when I saw all those rolls of film and imagined another life for myself where, after buying a film camera off of Xianyu, I could roam the city at night, taking picture after picture, knowing that, were I to run out of film, I could return to this vending machine and restock. Yet what would I take pictures of? What images are too precious to defile under the digital camera built into my phone? Maybe I’d just take pictures of other vending machines.
One of the grand fantasies of coming to East Asia is engaging with vending machines at 2am, buying things one could never buy from a vending machine back in “the old country”. They quickly become boring once you realize that they’re just another object one interacts with only by spending money. Another excuse to not talk to other human beings.
Of course, if I were taking film photos, I’d have to come back here during the day to hand the staff at the photography store my film canisters in order to get the pictures processed. I wonder what it’s like on the inside? With the lights off, I couldn’t see into the windows. All I could see was the reflection of street lights and signs for shops that hadn’t yet closed.