Why Vegan Photographic Film Does Not Exist
/You Can’t Get it
Photographic film for vegetarians or vegans isn’t something you’ll find for sale.
Plant-based photographers wishing to use film must either willingly, or ignorantly, use byproducts of slaughterhouses; boiled-down: skin, bone, ligaments.
Why doesn’t vegan camera film exist?
Because film technology relies on the properties of gelatine, which a single alternative doesn’t offer.
Doesn’t Exist, Or Can’t Exist?
It’s a bit like substituting a chicken egg in a recipe, a complex component which requires multiple ingredients to replace all of its combined qualities.
You can select a single alternative based on one needed function (banana as binder & thickener, for example) but no single vegan ingredient can quite (yet) replace the unique qualities of an egg.
In many recipes, an ingredient you don’t want to use, can just be dropped from the recipe; without using an alternative, but the gelatine in photographic film is essential to the way in which that piece of film works.
“Unfortunately, we do not know of any film that is made without gelatin. Over the years, PETA has pressured film manufacturers to find a gelatin substitute, and while Kodak and Fuji have researched non-animal alternatives, they still claim that they cannot replace animal gelatin in film.”
“Gelatine has unique characteristics which act as a membrane matrix for the silver crystals but also interacts with the crystals as they are formed. Substitutes have been attempted such as vegetable substitutes or PVOH, however to date, none perform to the same standard as gelatin.”
The Alternative Is… Digital?
Yep, with all the same complicated ethical issues of how and where materials are sourced to build batteries, computer chips, and factories full of slave labour; digital is as close to vegan as possible in the year 2021.
Even the controversial, yet undeniably dedicated organization, PETA, admits to knowingly using gelatine-film before digital cameras were invented, in order to document abuse and collect evidence, taking the lesser evil of using animal products to enact direct change.
“In the past, however, there was little choice, and we made the decision to use film—with the knowledge that it contained gelatin—to document cruelty (e.g., in the case of the Silver Springs monkeys) and to educate people. It was an imperfect decision, but we felt that, ultimately, taking photos with film served the greater good by bringing the plight of animals into the public eye.
PETA does not actively campaign against watching movies or taking photographs for pleasure, but we do encourage you to write to film manufacturers and movie studios about your concerns and encourage them to implement alternatives to gelatin.”
It seems the only way to function as a human being is to make some uncomfortable decisions while doing our best to be better in ways accessible to us.
Buy secondhand, source your energy from green sources, maintain equipment so it will last, and keep up to date with alternative methods of fixing images such as USING LEAVES?