From the River Bank — Kentmere 400 and the Alchemy of Shadows

There’s something ceremonial about loading a fresh roll of Kentmere 400. The way the light retreats as the back of the camera clicks shut — as if the film and I have made a pact. This project, From the River Bank, began not with intention, but with a whisper. The kind that coils around your ear in a half-sleep and leaves you with mud on your boots the next morning.

The river called.
Not loudly — more like a murmur stitched into the wind.
I followed it.

Kentmere 400’s grain is like smoke from a black candle — soft, curling, never static. Perfect for the kind of images I was looking to summon: images with edges frayed by mist, compositions torn between clarity and the void. I wandered to the riverbank with old optics and a heavy heart, thinking of rites long forgotten, of the things submerged beneath surface and time.

Each frame felt like a spell cast. Each exposure, a silent incantation.
Are these negatives... or offerings?

I kept returning at dusk. The hour where light falters, and water becomes a mirror not of the sky, but of the self. I started seeing things in the frames I hadn’t noticed in person — veils, figures, symbols etched in reeds and reflection. Maybe just tricks of the light, maybe not. Maybe photography is the trick. Maybe it’s a ritual disguised as art.

What do the waters remember that we forget? What sinks into silver halide that never shows in the print? What ghosts are we really capturing?

The river does not speak, but it reveals. The film, too, speaks in whispers — of process, patience, and the presence of something other. There is divination in developing. Each agitation of the tank is like stirring a cauldron, waiting for shadows to emerge from the void.

This is not a finished project.
It is a séance.
And I’m not sure I’m the one in control.

Kentmere 400 — cheap, but never simple.
From the riverbank, I’m watching.
From the riverbank, I’m asking.

Who watches back?