Monthly Archives: May 2017

Two remarkable photographs

Accidents happen. Sometimes old negatives go awry, the emulsion reticulating because of heat or moisture or the passage of mysterious subatomic particles…or just because.

I’ve been scanning negatives from Sarawak 1965-1967, uncovering events and locations I’d forgotten, and two of the frames on one roll had developed spontaneous reticulation that could be felt as ridges in the emulsion. I scanned them anyway, and when I opened them in Lightroom and tweaked them a bit, marvelous images emerged. These were taken by Broot at a ceremony for the raising of the first house post in the New Village that we were involved in building (a story in itself, and not a very happy one for the people who were being resettled).


a happy accident

another happy accident


Somewhere I think I have 50-year-old prints of these photos, without the added grace of reticulation. Don’t know where to start looking, but if and when they show up I’ll scan and blog them too. Meanwhile, enjoy the early work of a marvelously gifted and subtle photographer.

Another new project: Abandoned Ancestors

staring

Over the years I have collected lots of pictures of unknown folks, the most coherent subset of which is arrayed in Nova Scotia Faces and also configured as a book, Bluenose Physiognomy. The images that have no direct relation to Nova Scotia need their own site, so that I can begin the process of organizing them into a book. The springboard is a separate suite of web pages, which I expect will sprawl and interdigitate in the by-now-familiar mode. The beginnings are available at Abandoned Ancestors. Stop by for a look.