Save the Negatives!

[angela_n_hunt]

Long before digital was even a thing and could even be associated with the word photography, I was still a photographer. The kind that used film and emulsion and paid a lot of money to two separate custom labs to get my work done.

This…

 

 

…is most of the negatives that I shot during that time.

Yes. That’s a lot of film. A lot. Like woah. Like approximately over 50,000 individual negative images, or nearly 1,500 rolls of film, both black and white and color. And a small sliver of it has been scanned and preserved in digital format.

As some of you know, I recently moved house from a small place to a larger one, which necessitated getting the negs out of storage. Whereupon I discovered… water and mold had gotten into some of the negatives.

Yeah. Those of you who shot film or still do can start screaming now.

Point is, at this stage of the game, my plan to scan a few rolls of negatives at a time when I had the money is now an urgent project. I’ve got a better storage plan now for the negs, but to preserve what I have, I need to get all of these images scanned sooner than later.

With your help and ScanCafe, I can make that happen.

To scan everything would take ScanCafe nearly a full year (seriously, *a year*) and approximately $28,000. Which is basically insane. So, what I plan to do is triage what’s here and get a tenth of the archive scanned, specifically the damaged negatives before water and mold degrade them any further, and keep it down to a dull roar of about 150 rolls, or 5400 individual negatives, (which should only take them 43-51 days to scan o.O).

This is, quite frankly, part of my artistic legacy. These negatives are the physical embodiment of my body of work over the last 30 years. These images were and are my eye on the World as I traveled, lived in 20 different places, and carried a camera everywhere I went. Moments in time and places that others might have seen and photographed, but that moment, that place, well… these images are unique. They’re also precious to me beyond words.

With your help, I can bring these images back to life and put them out for everyone to see and share.

And as always, thank you.  From the bottom of my heart.

Originally published at ANGELA N. HUNT. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[eustacia-vye28.livejournal.com]

I'll try and share on my FB later if I get back on after the kids go to bed. Just had to comment that the silver briefcase in the photo there looks an awful lot like a PASIV. lol

[angela-n-hunt.livejournal.com]

o.O

LOL

Oh my goodness. I...had not made that connection. Um, it really really does look like a PASIV case. Which is really frighteningly apropos, considering that the contents are what dreams are made of.

Huh. Inception has really been with me forever, hasn't it? LOL

And thank you. More than I can say.