George Poelcher is a twenty-four-year-old Pittsburgh-based film photographer currently residing in Squirrel Hill. He began shooting film photography in the winter of 2022, and has spent the last year learning the medium and exploring the surrounding community in Pittsburgh. His work is focused predominantly in street photography, and is currently exploring self-portraiture in his free time. Poelcher has attended darkroom and film photography class at the Pittsburgh Center for Arts & Media, and has exhibited work in the Johnstown Cultural Art Crawl in 2023 through Studio32.
At some point in time, I felt as if I had disconnected from the physical world around me; instead, allowing myself to become ignorantly engulfed in the digital landscape we’ve manufactured. In doing so, I found myself drifting in life with this looming feeling of hopeless indifference, wondering if life had any grand promise of purpose.
Through my work, I have found that the spectacle of life is something that is left for our eyes to create rather than the logical analysis of the mind. The acceptance that there is no hidden answer or divine purpose, while frightening, allowed me to open myself to the beauty that is the world in front of me.
Wanting to embrace the analog and its imperfections, I’ve focused my work in film photography on life for what it is instead of what I think it should be; letting life come to me and share my perspective with others for the joy that it brings my soul rather than chasing a false promise of praise and accolades. I create for the nourishment of my peace, and for the simple truth that the experiences in life are what will bring me fulfillment every day.
My only goal as a film photographer, or even as a creative, is to create work that I will look back on in my later years and say to myself, “You have lived life for the sole purpose of making yourself happy.” If anything, my only hope of praise is that one day my negatives might be found in a thrift store long after I’ve died and appreciated by a stranger looking back on life shot from the perspective of my lens.