A Frame Within a Frame Within a Frame

The irony didn’t hit me until I developed the roll—an expired Ilford XP2 Super 400 that had been lounging at the bottom of a drawer for years. Shot with a Voigtländer Bessa R2 paired with the Nokton 35mm f/1.4, this image is as much a meditation on layers as it is a commentary on isolation.

What initially looked like an ordinary street shot—girl on a call, perched on a windowsill—turned out to be a trifecta of enclosures: her physical pose wrapped in posture and winter clothing, set within the architecture of the window, itself encased in the framing of the building. Beyond, the city reflects itself, ghostlike, on the glass—another layer, another barrier.

This wasn’t a high-contrast frame to begin with. The film, past its prime, responded softly, almost shyly. I embraced that. The lack of punch works here—the mild grain, the lower dynamic range, the greys bleeding into each other—all of it plays into a sense of quiet disconnection. If I’d pushed the film, I’d have risked shouting where the scene whispers.

Technically, composition hinges on symmetry. The architecture gave me the structural discipline. The girl gave the frame tension. One leg extended, the other bent. One hand dangling, the other gripping a phone. Movement inside stillness.

Shooting expired film can feel like a gamble, but in this case, the fragility of the medium matched the emotional fragility of the moment. The Bessa R2 and the Nokton delivered—mechanically simple, optically sharp, narratively honest.