Analog Photomart in Honda Plaza offes a variety of film as well as processing. The shop marks a return of film photo services to Little Tokyo.
Analog Photomart is the neighborhood’s new home for film photography.
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS
RAFU STAFF WRITER
There was a time – unthinkable as it may seem – that photos you’d snap would not instantly appear before your eyes. For the majority of photography’s history, there was a period of actual waiting between taking the pictures and seeing how well (or not) they turned out.
I have clear memories of rumbling down to the Fotomat – a tiny kiosk hut usually located in the corner of some shopping center parking lot – to drop off rolls of film. About a week later, you’d return to pick up an envelope of glossy new prints.
There was a bit of magic in that delay; how you remembered the moments you’d captured with your Nikon F, Canon AE-1 or Kodak Instamatic probably didn’t match what eventually came out on paper, but the whole process was itself enriching.
That scenario all but disappeared with the advent and proliferation of digital photography, even more so as cameras built into cell phones have made startling advances. It’s easier, instantaneous and eliminates the need for vats of toxic chemicals needed for processing film.
But the aesthetic that was always a hallmark of film photography remains a draw for professionals and hobbyists alike. For many, the discovery of the old, imperfect world of non-digital pictures is a new passion.
Little Tokyo now has a hub for this who want to discover — or rediscover — the joys of film, located in Honda Plaza. Analog Photomart is the labor of love of Downtown resident Bryan Hong, who said opening the shop came as a kind of vision from above.
“I’ve never even worked in a retail store, but I basically was born with a camera in my hands. My family always had cameras around, and I always played with them ever since I was little,” Hong explained. “And then I was very much like an early adopter of digital cameras, and it was so exciting to be able to see the pictures right away, but those early cameras were horrible.”
Hong said the genesis of his business grew out the forced inactivity we all experienced during the pandemic.
“I was at my parents’ house and I found one of our family’s old cameras in a closet, and it still had a roll of film in it,” he recalled. “I took it to a shop on Los Angeles Street called One Stop film lab to have it developed, bu the roll was completely obliterated. It was blank, but I wanted to see if the camera still works, so I bought another roll of film and shot it.”
The market for film and processing has been steadily growing, Hong said, and Little Tokyo has been without a provider of film services since the closing of Kimura Photomart in 2010.
“I live in the neighborhood, about a block away from here, and I would have loved it if there was a place I could walk to and buy film and drop it off for developing,” Hong said.
More than cameras, Hong focuses primarily on film and processing. He carries mostly 35mm film from a variety of brands – Kodak, Fuji, Ilford and others – and offers processing. He works with outside labs for developing, but also has a tiny darkroom at the shop.
During our chat, a customer named Kathy stopped by to drop off a couple of rolls for processing – as well as a small bag of gourmet coffee beans as a gift. She said aside from the look and artistry, film offers a degree of anonymity, unlike digital photos that usually contain metadata like time and place.
“The craze right now is content creating and posting online, but I kind of want to still keep my privacy,” she said. “You know, anyone can search up my family, my teachers, things like that. And I don’t want it to be too exposed, but I want to keep taking pictures.”
Kathy is among the dozens of customers new to film photography whose smiling faces adorn a wall in a corner of Analog. Cameras in hand, they posed for quick Polaroid snapshots after becoming devotees of the old medium at the shop.
Hong said his customers have ranged from seasoned professionals to many using film for the first time, adding that a large part of his business is processing the pictures from disposable cameras. Yes, those are still a thing.
“It’s the best way to preserve memories, really, and it’s actually not hard. It’s easy and it’s fun. “
Furthermore, Hong insists the tactile nature of film is far more practical than constantly wrangling digital files in an ever-evolving technological landscape.
“It’s having the physical record of it, the archival aspect of it. You can just throw the negatives into a closet and they’ll be there 30 years later.
“With digital files, if you don’t really stay on top of migrating all of your data to whatever the new storage medium is, like you are going to lose access to it. With these, you literally just hold it up to the light, and see what’s there.”
Analog Photomart is located at 416 E. 2nd Street in Little Tokyo. (213) 372-5002.