Hillvale: 23/03/2020 to 10/06/2020

Hillvale is a small photo lab based in Brunswick, specialising in film developing and scanning across all film formats. Before Hillvale, Andrew Johnson and Jason Hamilton, the Co-Founders of Hillvale, first met at RMIT University. Andrew describes, ‘“We bonded over a shared love for film photography”. With their passion for film, they created Hillvale as a device to bring film photography back to life, giving local photographers the opportunity to develop film at an affordable price. From its inception in 2013, Hillvale have been active contributors to Melbourne's photography community, sponsoring and supporting various bodies, such as; Centre for Contemporary Photography, Photographic Studies College, I.P.F, Centre for Multicultural Youth, as well as local artists and photographers. With their combined dedication, contribution and warmth with the local photographic community, Hillvale has become an integral space for bringing photographers together for the past 7 years. 

When Covid-19 was starting to become a concern in mid march 2020, all employees came together and decided as a group to close doors and sustain a zero contact policy with customers. ‘We suspended all drop box activity and have been essentially locked down since then. Only accepting postal orders and non contact drop offs at our lab’ explained by Andrew. When the closure of non essential services were implemented 23/03/2020, the Hillvale employees did express their concerns with working at an intake business. As there was a lot of uncertainty around the spread of Covid-19 at that time, there was a regard that employees may become sick, and furthermore increasing the spread as all employees were living in share houses. To minimise the risk of infection, as a team they decided that all employees should stay at home. For the first six weeks it was just Jason and Andrew working in the lab. “At the start it was quite nice. It was just Jas and I working together and it felt like we just started out again. But then the stress started to compound and it got a bit harder”. 

Whilst Melbourne was in deep lockdown, the accessibility for photographic film was very limited. As a Covid response, Hillvale devised a film and negative home delivery service. Customers could purchase film and request their negatives via Hillvale’s website and social media platforms, which would then be personally delivered to their doorsteps by Jason and Andrew. This delivery service was also offered free of charge to a selection of local suburbs. Jason and Andrew would be doing drop off deliveries week by week, every Wednesday in rotation. For each location, they would both santise between each stop, making sure that all safety precautions were met. For what started as a simple Covid response initiative, became very popular throughout the local community during lockdown. Hillvale started to gain some close relationships through this transaction, with some customers dropping off presents to the Hillvale lab to express their gratitude. 

“It’s been quite nice to see a bonding of businesses and community. Everything was reset to a point. It makes you realise what's important.”  Andrew Johnson.

Website: hillvale.com.au

Instagram: hillvalephoto

Location: 16 Black Street, Brunswick