A new short film by photographer Cy Kuckenbaker turns a decades-long medical mystery and a deliberately slow way of making pictures into a quiet reflection on disability and on how people find their bearings in the world. Titled "Everything Twice", the film was featured by Colossal on 30 October 2026.

Kuckenbaker had noticed since childhood that one of his eyes drooped. He long assumed the cause was a snowboarding accident, but doctors quickly dismissed that explanation. Only after countless tests spread over many years did he learn that he had been born with a rare disease, a discovery that reframed something he had lived with for as long as he could remember.

The film sets that slow process of discovery against an equally unhurried photographic practice that Kuckenbaker took up to counter burnout. He built cameras by hand from cardboard boxes and magnifying glasses bought at a drugstore, then used them to photograph landscapes and everyday sights along the West Coast of the United States.

Working this way demands patience at every stage, from constructing the camera to waiting for an image to emerge, and the film treats that labour as part of its subject. Stills show a man holding a pink, glittering tape measure over his eyes and a row of box cameras set out on sand. By placing the two slow processes side by side, the film becomes both a piece of self-discovery and a contemplation of disconnection and loss. The film can be watched online, where it is presented alongside stills from the cardboard-camera shoots on the West Coast.