Unreleased Film Stills

16mm motion picture film, scanned and printed on aluminum
12" x 12"
2025

Analog video, digitized and printed on aluminum
12" x 12"
2025

The films are camera-less and made on my deck using plant material from my garden, which I soak with other ingredients to create a developer. I expose an entire roll of 16mm motion picture film and tape it back and forth across my table so it lays flat. Then, I selectively develop the film by pressing developer-soaked plants onto the emulsion. The resulting prints are often representational images of plants, while some frames look like celestial scenes or landscapes, and others are abstract. I have the film scanned, and then I look at each individual frame, evaluating each image as such to discover what to print. I title them with their identifying frame number.

The videos are made with a vintage video camera plugged into a CRT television and pointed at the screen’s pixels, which are representing the live feed of its image. Imperfections along this signal flow amplify quickly, generating new and unexpected imagery that is colorful and dynamic. I again look at each individual frame to decide what images to print.


Jonah Greenstein is a life drawing model, math tutor, and certified pharmacy technician. Their films are archived at the University of California Los Angeles Library Film & Television Archive and New York University Digital Media Library.