Hi all, Sorry, this got much longer than intended.
Two years ago my uncle (my mother's brother) passed away. Peacefully, at around 84, I believe. He was a photographer. (Not by profession - he was a "radio-telegraphist" (literally translated from Swedish - if you know what his profession would be called in English, please report (or in German, French, Spanish and Italian too). He'd be in charge of tele communications for instance on a ship. However I believe he only did one trip in the mid 50:s. He got too sea sick to carry on at sea! :) So instead of travelling the high seas (which a lot of Alanders did and do, since international shipping is and has long been a major industry of Aland) he took a job at the local "Coastal-radio station" (literally translated). I am now happy he did, since this meant that he'd shoot a lot of pictures locally in Aland and his and my home town, Mariehamn.) After his wife also passed away last year, I first told his daughter/my cousin, that all his picture archives, negatives and prints etc., MUST be taken care of and I also offered me to do it. I actually had been emphasizing this already with my uncle (who appreciated my thoughts - but he was already starting to lose some of his intellectual capacity) as well as with my aunt/his wife, who to my horror first gave me some ambigious statements, making me wonder if she actually had disposed of it all. She had at least at times expressed thoughts like "I'm so tired of all his photos and those things, I think I'm going to throw it all away...". (Sheer horror at the thought - not only did we, the family, know of his unique family photos of which we had been given many copies, but I also knew/thought/hoped there'd also be pictures of great local documentary value in his archives.) Luckily, it eventually turned out that his photo archives had been preserved after all... (Sigh of relief... right? :) ) Since also his daughter, living abroad, at first when having to deal with emptying and selling her parents' house, didn't seem to care that much about the photos or my enthusiasm for them, I now realize that all the time up till now, the question about my uncle's photo archives, actually has meant some considerable concern, almost stress, to me. Anyway, during the last couple of months I have been helping her cousin clearing her (family) house, as it was sold. I guess I slowly gained the trust and understanding for my views on the photos, since I now have been given my uncle's photo archives (at least as a deposition and for getting them sorted out, cleaned up and making some sort of an inventory of them). I also got a lot of other old camera and dark room stuff, some a little interesting but most of which I will have to find another home for. My uncle - Erik, by the way - had the good taste of early on - that is in the early 1950s - choosing to shoot color slides, at a time when not too many people did so around here. For a couple of weeks now I have spent most of the days and nights doing everything that possibly can be made to the most important part of the archives, that is sorting out and cleaning his earliest slides. (From all his some 60 active years there will be thousands of slides, and thousand of negatives). Well, regarding his archives there is indeed a lot more that could have been desired. Listen to this: I have yet to come across one single note of date, place or persons depicted to any of his slides, negatives or single photographs! Not one single peace of information anywhere! :) (This makes for some interesting intellectual detective work on my part. In a way I don't mind, since it is very interesting. On the other hand I'd really want to spend the time on my own projects. However, I'm starting to think there will be at least an exhibition of his photos. Maybe a book, but I'm not sure about how to finance such a project.) Yet, he was very well aware of what was considered to be even the most basic method of filing negatives and slides. From late 1940s onwards he'd subscribe to photography magazines where such things repeatedly were discussed, just as we are discussing it on this list. He was in his daily work as well as in his capacity as a local politician, very much aware of the necessity of properly filing documents of all kinds. Yet, regarding this one personally very important part of his life, he never applied even the most basic filing method. My guess is that he simply never got started, although always thinking he'd have to, and in the end never got about to start while all new pictures added mounted to an even bigger and too big a task... The only thing there (thankfully) is, are quite a few albums (still only a small part of his output) that he, on my insisting it, started to put together very late in his years (but as I indicated, he was already starting to lose his capacity to do it completely) where many of his later prints were sorted, but only roughly by subject, year or maybe a month. Anyway, I see that this message is getting too long. I actually just wanted to tell you more about his actual photography and what an experience, on many different levels, it has been and is, dealing with this legacy of this one 20th century man's life's output of photographs. Maybe you can relate to this story, since I guess most of you, already having assembled a great amount of photographic documents of various kind, or on your way to do so, every now and then, just like I do, ask yourself what to do with your archives or what will become of them when you're not longer around. Maybe I'll get back to his actual photographs later. Thanks for reading, Lasse -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
