On a busy summer afternoon at 205 West Main Street in Carrboro, Crystal Silva, a photo technician, is helping usher magic into existence.
She’s processing color film, and slowly pictures begin to emerge—maybe a graduation or road trip, a visit to the zoo or a quiet moment at home. It’s 2024, so Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter are playing inside the photo lab. Thirty years ago Salt-N-Pepa or Mariah Carey might have been playing during this timeless process, but otherwise, this scene would’ve looked much the same.
The store, owned by Tony Mansfield, opened in July 1994 at its original location on Chapel Hill’s East Rosemary Street. In 1997, Southeastern Camera moved to Carrboro and eventually settled at its current location on West Main Street. This summer marks 30 years of analog paradise.
“I’m happy we’ve been able to help people all this time,” Mansfield says. “I really feel that the customers are extremely loyal.”
After Mansfield graduated from the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC-Chapel Hill (then the School of Journalism) in 1988, he managed a now-closed camera store, University Camera, in Durham. When he decided to open his own store, Mansfield picked Chapel Hill as Southeastern Camera’s first home, because it was the only town in North Carolina that didn’t have a camera store after Foister’s Camera Store closed in 1979, he says. He also was familiar with the area, he says, and wanted to help supply photography students at the Hussman School with materials for their photography classes, such as film.
In addition to selling all things photography, Southeastern Camera has a full-service photo lab in which photo technicians perform film processing for black-and-white and color film. This service is one of the store’s most popular, along with taking passport photos and facilitating camera repairs.
“If somebody is walking through that door, it’s probably because they’re dropping off films,” says Chris Johnson, the store manager. “That’s a lot of the faces and activity we see on a daily basis.”
With two locations—one in Carrboro and one in Raleigh at 2410 Atlantic Avenue—Southeastern Camera represents one of the last local camera stores. In the Triangle, there is only one other store that develops film, Peace Camera in Raleigh.
It hasn’t always been this way: Johnson remembers during the early 2000s when camera stores were abundant across the state; by 2010, though, many had closed. He says these closures were mostly due to the advent of the internet, where people could purchase a camera online more cheaply.
To him, the primary reason Southeastern Camera has remained open after all these years is because it sells a range of equipment, including both new and vintage cameras, lenses, filters, and external flashes. The store usually serves up to 50 customers a day and its reputation with customers doesn’t hurt, either—often counter service includes personal advice on the best cameras or film.
“Sometimes people come in and ask for help that’s not even related to photography,” Johnson says.
Johnson became the manager of Southeastern Camera in 1996. Back then, the store only sold film cameras; in 2000, it also started selling early digital cameras. While this type of camera didn’t initially take over film because of its high cost, it eventually did begin to outpace film cameras. Around 2015, Southeastern Camera experienced a significant drop in film sales, leaving Johnson wondering if film photography would disappear completely.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the resurgence in the popularity of film photography at Southeastern Camera. During a year where time seemed to move more slowly, perhaps it was only natural to document it in a slower way, too.
“I think a lot of people were looking for hobbies, and film was a good thing to do,” Johnson says. “I started shooting more in film, and we’ve seen the rise ever since.
It may be, too, that younger generations want to catch a break from their phones: in a recent poll by Pew Research Center, 38 percent of teens 13 to 17 said they spend too much time on their phones. Maybe, too, younger generations are drawn to the messier, less-curated images that digital cameras tend to produce. In the last year, the hashtag #digitalcamera in the United States topped at around 1 billion views on TikTok, with 87 percent of the searches coming from adults 18 to 24.
Cynthia Liu, a photographer from Cary, was new to film photography when she first visited Southeastern Camera three years ago. At the time, she was in her sophomore year at UNC-CH, and she bought her first film camera, a Minolta X-700, at the store. Starting film photography can feel intimidating at first, she says, but the Southeastern Camera employees made it feel more accessible. She’s gone on to purchase a camera strap and point-and-shoot camera for a friend and develops all of her rolls at the store.
“Out of like probably 50 or 60 rolls of film that I shot,” Liu says, “I think I’ve only ever gotten like three developed anywhere that’s not [Southeastern Camera].”
Liu’s film is one example of the nearly 100 rolls of film Silva receives per day. She spends most of her day scanning and printing color film in the lab amid the hum of machines over 20 years old.
When customers drop off their film at Southeastern Camera, Silva tapes it to a card that gets pulled through a color processing machine. After the film comes out of the machine, it is considered developed because it has images. It’s then taken to a scanner that makes digital files of the pictures, which are emailed to the customer or printed out if the customer opts to get prints.
Adam Aji, another photographer from the area, is new to film photography. He first visited Southeastern Camera in October 2023 to get his film developed. Since then, he has started returning regularly.
“I’m still exploring what it means to be a photographer for myself,” he says. “I’m looking forward to trying out different sorts of ways of developing and scanning my photography.”
During the summer, Silva notices a drop in film processing because students are out of school. Much of her workload depends on what is happening elsewhere; for example, this year’s solar eclipse gave her a lot of film to process. UNC-CH activities also drum up traffic.
“It’s really cool to be like, ‘Oh God, Duke game tomorrow, that’s gonna be my problem at work,’” she says with a laugh.
Silva says people across North Carolina and the country also mail film to Southeastern Camera. Some of her favorite photos to process are those of weddings, pets, and vacations.
Katherine Apuzzo, another photo lab technician at Southeastern Camera, has spent two years managing black-and-white film development. Unlike color film processing, she has her hands on the film every step of the detailed process, and it takes longer—usually around two weeks.
The main steps include sorting the film by type to determine the length of processing time; loading it into metal cylinder tanks in a dark box, which shields the film from light; and developing the film using chemicals and timing it. At the end, Apuzzo matches the film with the customer’s bag and hangs it for scanning or calls the customer to pick up their process-only film.
“It’s a lot of focus work, not thinking about anything else, but I like work like that,” she says.
Dillon Ingold, who attends to the machines in the photo lab, says everyone who works in the lab knows how to do each other’s jobs and that they rotate positions; for example, he can process black-and-white film like Apuzzo if needed.
But his main role, he says, is to ensure that every person’s images and films that pass through the machines are treated equally.
“It has to go through the same process, and we have a quality control and standard that we’ve established for ourselves over the past three decades that really can’t be muddled,” Ingold says.
Looking ahead for Southeastern Camera, Johnson says he hopes the store will continue to stay relevant.
But one thing is certain: Ingold and the other employees will remain committed to fostering an environment of care for every customer who steps inside Southeastern Camera.
“Photography is such an integral part of every person who works here’s life and existence as a whole,” Ingold says. The job, he says, is really about “building community and building friendships.”
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