Nostalgia and passion fuel a young couple who run an old-school photo lab

“It all started as a small passion project,” says Fabriccio Díaz, 28, who, with his wife Lucía Ramírez, 25, runs the only fully operational photographic film development laboratory in Central America from his apartment in Guatemala City.

“Now we have more than 60 customers a month and we have developed more than 800 rolls this year alone,” he adds.

Arca Film Lab has been in high demand this year and is the only photographic film development lab in Central America that develops any type of analog photography film, which includes the rather complicated process of developing positives in a process known as E-6.

Fabriccio, who studied cinematography, explains that the great inaccessibility of high-quality film development services in Central America gave the first decisive push to learn how to develop his first film.

“When we started experimenting and developing films in our apartment, friends started asking us to develop films for them and everything took off somehow,” recalls Lucía.

And so, Arca Film Lab was born in September 2023 as a simple Instagram page that offers film development services in Guatemala.

The couple learned most of the skills needed to develop the film by watching YouTube videos and reaching out to other international film labs and asking for advice.

“We were surprised that so many people answered our questions. Many of the veterans in the world of photo development helped us by sharing their experiences and tricks. We are really grateful for that,” says Fabriccio.

Fabriccio and Lucía’s love for photography is not limited to film development, however. The couple also organizes “photo walks” in which a group of people gather in Antigua, the old center of Guatemala City, to take pictures and experiment with old analog cameras.

For young analog photography enthusiasts like 22-year-old Iván Ortiz, taking pictures with a camera that is older than him gives him something that modern cameras can’t compete with.

“It’s like the nostalgia of a generation we were never part of,” he tells the BBC.

Iván says that older people don’t always have the recent hype for old cameras and films. “They just don’t understand our perspective,” he explains.

“We live in a world where everything is digital and fast. Because of analog photography, I have to make conscious decisions about my photos and focus only on the act of photography. And the best part is that you have something physical later, and not just another data file,” he adds.

Having physical photos to keep is also something that Steven López from the United States highlights as an advantage of analog photography.

The 33-year-old travels through Central America to document the last traces of Mayan culture and always carries a 35mm analog camera with him.

“Photography and especially analog photography is just the best way to document and experience cultures. Every time I come back from traveling and find the film developed it’s like Christmas!”, he told the BBC.

The community of analog photography enthusiasts in Central America may be growing rapidly, but the challenges are greater than elsewhere.

“It’s really hard to have analog cameras here and it’s even harder to get them in good condition,” explains 26-year-old Ronald Ottoniel, who went on the photographic walk to buy new rolls of film and turn them into others to be. developed.

And there are other obstacles too.

Fabriccio and Lucía explained that the process of buying and importing the chemicals needed to develop positive film was extremely complicated because the import of these chemicals is strictly monitored by the state and requires special permits, which made a painstakingly long stay.

“Many other laboratories do not offer E-6 processing simply because it is so complicated to import the chemicals,” says Fabriccio.

Their business may be expanding, but Fabriccio and Lucía are determined to make sure it doesn’t lose the personal touch and passion that inspired it in the first place.

Lucía explains to us how sometimes customers “put small sweets in the packages they send us and sometimes we send back a handwritten note”.

“It is important for us that this is not a mass production business, but that each customer is (treated as) an individual,” he adds.

All over the world, photographic laboratories use large machines that develop the film almost automatically, but in the humble apartment of Fabriccio and Lucía, the process is very “hands-on”.

For color and positive film (E-6) the temperature of the chemicals and the time that the film is exposed to them must be exact, otherwise, the whole film roll will be bad.

“The beginning was definitely not easy with this whole process, but after developing more than 800 rolls of film, these processes come as second nature to us”, remembers Fabriccio.

“But the first time we developed the positive films, the E-6 process, we were so nervous because we invested a lot in the chemicals and the roll. But when it came out well and we can see these vivid colors of the positive film is still very exciting,” he adds.

Another indispensable member of the Arca Film Lab is Toto, the four-month-old cat who is, according to Fabriccio and Lucía, in charge of quality control and roves around during the entire development process.

The developed film rolls are transferred from the kitchen to the bathroom, since it is the most dust-free space in the house.

Here they dry, to be scanned later in a high-resolution Nikon scanner, which Fabriccio says is the highest-resolution film scanner in Central America.

Fabriccio and Lucía have now also expanded to El Salvador, where they regularly collect and sell rolls of film.

The young couple remains ambitious and, in the future, they say they hope to establish a strong relationship with CineStill and Eastman Kodak and expand to the development of cine film rolls, which would include a complicated process known as ECN-2.

“It is my dream to bring back the classic film scene here in Central America! We have so much talent, knowledge and enthusiasm to offer to the world. (…) with Arca Film Lab we started a movement that we want to push further and in more,” says Fabriccio.

All photos by Fritz Pinnow are subject to copyright.