[Rollei] Negatives of one's ancestors

[Aaron Reece <oboeaaron >]

	That's a great story, Carlos. When I started to do my own darkroom 
work, my step-grandmother started "discovering" negatives from my 
grandfather's "archives" (shoeboxes) and passing them my way. Most were 
6x9 so it was a simple matter to just make a contact sheet of 8 at a 
time. There were a few larger ones that must have come from one of 
those cameras that let you write a little note at the bottom of each 
negative when you took the picture, which would then get printed along 
with the rest of the negative. From the dress it is clear that these 
date from before the war - the Great War, that is. Some of them were 
taken in places that are still recognizable today (Mill Mountain and 
Old Southwest in Roanoke, Virginia). Some of the people are still known 
to us, such as my great-grandmother in her prime. These must be from 
before the time that film types were encoded along the edges of the 
frames, but whatever it was, it was capable of phenomenal density 
range, and it's quite difficult to obtain a print from them on any but 
the softest paper grades. Given the era I would imagine that contact 
prints were the norm rather than the exception.
	Anyway, the main body of the negatives were made by my grandfather 
himself, depicting the daily life of his family and children (my mother 
and her siblings) growing up on a mountain in rural Roanoke county 
during the 40s and 50s. It seems that rather than have prints made, he 
would just have the negatives processed and use the saved money to buy 
more film, so most of these were never printed until I got them a few 
years ago.
	In any case, these B&W negatives, having received processing and 
washing that was probably questionable at best, then stored in 
conditions of extreme heat and cold, aridity and humidity, some of them 
for upwards of eighty years, are still in fine condition and indeed 
they print much as I assume they would have when first processed. 
Whenever I get bored doing tank inversions I just remind myself that if 
properly cared for these images could last for centuries. My 
great-grandcritter may one day take these negatives in their archival 
sleeves and binders and with ten dollars worth of hardware and 
chemistry make contact prints that "seemed taken yesterday." That is 
not going to happen with a CD-ROM.
Best regards,
- -Aaron

On Friday, July 16, 2004, at 04:58  PM, Carlos Manuel Freaza wrote:

> Three years ago I found an old negative 6x9 cm within
> a box, I looked it and I suspected my oma -my mother's
> mother- was there, but young yet.

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