Photo Essay: The Final Week of Capitol Hill 60 Minute Photo in Seattle
Capitol Hill 60 Minute Photo closed its doors at the end of last year. Given the transformation photography has gone through over the past decade, it hardly came as a surprise. At its core, the success, survival, and eventual demise of 60 Minute Photo is just another familiar story of a business fighting against the moving current of technology. It’s closure, however, reveals something important, something personal. It represents a shift in how we create and preserve our memories and a deepening of the divide between customer and proprietor.
60 Minute provided a service that allowed for the continuation of a love affair with a photographic process rooted in the physical. The experience, equipment, and precision required to develop a roll of film or make a single print seems excessive and unnecessary in today’s world of digital cameras and print-on-demand services. However, the process of making a photograph, capturing a moment in time, then entrusting it to another individual, embeds meaning and importance into each image produced. This act of creating and then letting go lends itself to a relationship of trust, and, when that relationship ends, a unique feeling of loss follows.
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A Note From The Page Author
Something very similar is happening in North Hollywood, California. Camera Craft, a former pro shop for the movie making industry and countless pro and amateur photographers will be closing in a month or two. I owe them my photography career really. They rented me equipment and gave sage advice to a nascent pro like me. With their help I was first published in jewelry magazines like American Jewelry Manufacturer, Modern Jeweler, and Lapidary Journal. I will miss that place as long as I live. It had a 50 year run, helped many of us go from film to digital. Good bye old friend, goodbye.