Villa Hidalgo, Coahuila, April 2001
Villa Hidalgo is a small hamlet near the Colombia border crossing, just north of Laredo, Texas. I had visited Piedras Negras and Sabinas earlier in the week, and ran through about twenty rolls of film. For this project, I was using Agfa's high-sautration HDC, Vista, and Optima II print films. I ran out of film prior to visiting Villa Hidalgo, and found some store brand film at a Pemex convenience store on the way back towards the border (Pemex is the national chain of petrol service stations in Mexico).
I got such beautiful results with this film, I was simply astonished at the brilliance and saturation of the colors, as well as the over luminance of the resulting prints. On the box, it stated it was made in Italy, and after some research I found that the company that manufactures this film is Ferrania
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.One of the joys of being a film photographer is that trying out a new roll of film, never before used, is always an event. Even today, while digital photography rules the roost and all experimentation with an image takes place on a computer screen, new emulsions are issued periodically, and I'm always first to try them out.
