Where I buy film there seem to be twice as many young women as young men buying film. Young men (not only young men) like technology. Before cars were affordable in Britain it was stereo equipment, so many young people steeped in popular music, which included most particularly, jazz. The Sony Walkman of the early ‘80s started the decline of the equipment choice to just whatever portable was going, with the ultimate perversity to some eyes (ears) a connection for playing your iPod through your Yamaha R5 to your Wharfdale speakers. Fast forward 70 years from the stereo hay days and many guys aren’t into film because they’re into vinyl. For the young women, much as it is obvious many of them love their particular camera, it seems from what you can see on the internet that it is really photography that they are interested in, photographs. Not saying that there aren’t men with the same inclinations but it seems to me that young women have a purer intent.
They’ve seen the magic and mystery and particularity of film.
There is a lot here. Not to use generalizations (too heavily) but in my experience, women - and some men - are more interested in people and behavior rather than things (objects).
A subset of that anecdotal observation is that the men and women that are more interested in people than objects tend to make better journalists or, at least, observers and commentators on human behavior. Gear-heads, regardless of gender, are gear-heads. But most people aren't one or the other. They are a mix of both.
Film is a rubric for a larger process that involves an interesting aspect of human behavior, both in front of and behind the lens. The same can be said for digital, and the argument might be made that with the democratization of photography via digital and especially with camera phones, there are more opportunities to become consumed with photographs rather than the means by which they are made. One is simply less shrouded in arcane process and technical skill.
The choice of one or the other is interesting only to the person making the choice and, perhaps, a critic of their work. Either way, the photographer is subject to the medium, a prisoner of its constraints, and forced to work with (not necessarily within) its capabilities.
I have had rational people, when I've offered them a ride in a small aeroplane, say things along the lines of, "They fly despite the science that says they shouldn't, right?" And that takes me down the "well that's actually a bumblebee myth (they fly for the same aerodynamic reasons anything else flies)".... So, film cameras? No biggee. Just don't try to explain reciprocity.
