Collecting old negatives from unknown photographers

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I remember Andy Warhol used to pickup other people's unclaimed photos at drug stores. Collecting vernacular photography is fun.

 

[greggwperkins]

I was wondering if you had any negatives depicting the French Alps. I would be interested in buying them if you happened to have such a collection/selection. Pls let me know, and thanks for your consideration.

Best,

Gregg

Hi,<BR><BR>If anyone is interested, I have thousands of 1950's and 1960's original color and black and white&nbsp;2 1/4" x 2 1/4" negatives.&nbsp; Images taken by contributing photographer to Life Magazine.

 

[dibber]

Hi all,

I'm interested in purchasing old film negatives from the 50s and 60s preferably. Please advise

Cheers

 

[dibber]

Hi, do you still have those negatives by any chance?

 

[bvy]

I remember Andy Warhol used to pickup other people's unclaimed photos at drug stores. Collecting vernacular photography is fun.

I never heard that about Warhol. That's funny.

 

[studiocarter]

My wife wants an entire shoe box full of 70mm negatives scanned. They start in 1908.

 

[cb1]

my boss found about 30 4x6 B&W negatives. we estimate the dates to be sometime after 1908 based on buildings in NYC. The scans were wonderful and made you wonder who these people were and what they were doing.
this is resized. but you get the idea...

 

[jeffreythree]

I have a bag full of old negatives, mostly 6x9 from an old Brownie or something. A lot are out of focus or have exposure issues. The Alamo one was pretty good, though. I think it would be fun to track down family and hand them a print, and found online a scan of the 1944 Moody High School yearbook with almost the same picture, but labeled with names. The parent taking this pic was probably standing next to the yearbook photographers.

 

[Wayne]

This is a truly disturbing affliction you sickos and weirdos have. I sure hope I don't catch it, but suddenly I feel a thrift store visit coming on...

 

[Theo Sulphate]

... one is the courthouse in Vancouver, WA, and the other is a semi-rural landscape from somewhere in the Portland/Vancouver area.
...
View attachment 47729 View attachment 47730

Yes, the first is the Clark County Courthouse in Vancouver. Based on Google Images, it looks nearly identical today.

The car on the left is an early 1950 Ford, based on the turn signals at the ends of the center bar. That helps date the photo as 1950 or later.

The second seems to be taken from the Heights area of Vancouver looking southeast across the Columbia towards Mt. Hood. Based on a map, I'd say it was taken south of MacArthur Blvd. and somewhere between Lieser and Andresen Rds. If I had time, I'd go down to Vancouver and try to recreate the shots to see how that place looks today. Good historical shot.

 

[Slixtiesix]

I don´t do it myself but I think it´s a great hobby. These old pictures deserve to be looked at!

 

[studiocarter]

How about printing up a bunch of them and having a show?
A local historical society may be a place to connect with. My area even has a camera club!

 

[Larry Bullis]

Hi all,

I really enjoy to buy some old negatives on some flea market or on auctions, and then develop them in a darkroom... it is like time traveling. Also when I buy some old camera and as a bonus I get some old negative inside: it is great (one example from agfa isolette attached).

Anyone else has this "hobby" ?

cheers,

I can't say "hobby". Not even an obsession. Just that when they show up, I can't seem to resist them. I am not a collector; that would be too organized. I accumulate stuff like that. When I pass on, my kids are going to hate me.

I taught photography for many years, in a local college. One day, some guy (not a student or college employee) walked in with a pretty good sized box. Not a huge one, but substantial. Said he had acquired hundreds of glass plates from the 1890's down in California, and had been lugging them around for many years. Well, I have them now, and have tried many times to figure out just who this mystery photographer was, with zero success. The plates are all ~3-1/4 x 4-1/4. Some are much better than others. All Southern California, most I think in the LA area. Very little can be identified as to location, at least by me. There are images of the Santa Monica Pier. There are a very few (disappointing, that is!) of LA streets with NO CARS! It's a very mixed bag. But fascinating nonetheless. I've been thinking I need to build a carrier for printing them with my 4x5 enlarger. I have scanned some of them and incorporated them into other art, but even for that, they aren't very useful (maybe I need to take another look). The guy's name was Oliver C. Clarke. A vague image of him appears in a mirror in one of the plates. The big problem with them is that they just aren't remarkable enough to compel me to do much with them.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

... hundreds of glass plates from the 1890's down in California ... most I think in the LA area. Very little can be identified as to location, at least by me. There are images of the Santa Monica Pier. There are a very few (disappointing, that is!) of LA streets with NO CARS! It's a very mixed bag. But fascinating nonetheless. ...

I'd love to see these, as I'm from that area and lived there over 25 years. In my own photography, I'm somewhat of a historian: making photos of places I know will change.

At the least, I'm sure the Santa Monica History Museum would be interested:

http://santamonicahistory.org/

.

 

[farmersteve]

I don't do it but there is a fairly active community of people that do this. Yard sales, estates sales and eBay are loaded with old negatives that people are looking for the next Vivian Meier.

 

[Wayne]

I don't do it but there is a fairly active community of people that do this. Yard sales, estates sales and eBay are loaded with old negatives that people are looking for the next Vivian Meier.

And selling off historical photos/plates/negatives that they obtained through unsavory means. Apparently there is a growing market for this stuff. I was talking with the president of our local historical society and he believes a lot of old photos were stolen and sold by former members (I think he suggsted it was a past president even).

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I once bought a folder at an antique shop solely to get the roll of film in it (they wouldn't sell it separately). Nothing of enormous interest on that one, just a couple of exterior shots of someone's house.

But I once bought a box of IR sheet film that must have been from the late 40s (it said "Develop by June 1950"), and it turned out to have a couple of exposed sheets in it. (I *think* they were undeveloped, but of course I didn't see them until I'd put them through development myself and they didn't have anything like the images I'd tried to shoot.) They were pretty decent, apparently shot with a Speed Graphic or something similar (you can see the bed in one shot); one is the courthouse in Vancouver, WA, and the other is a semi-rural landscape from somewhere in the Portland/Vancouver area. The rest of the box appears not to have been used---I developed a few additional sheets just to check, but they were blank.

-NT


View attachment 47729 View attachment 47730

That looks like Mt. Baker seen from the Fraser Valley along the Fraser River up here!

 

[Michael Guzzi]

I recently got some 1500 negatives from a fellow in Germany. Most are family shots, quite a few cats and dogs, not to mention babies too. But a few shots like this one:

Now, this was shot with a crappy P&S using a very improvised stand, and there is a lot of dust and newton rings around. I made a few shots and I am motivated to get the better shots on digital files, decently. And maybe even make some wet prints from them. It is interesting seeing places you don't know, or places like they were 30 or more years ago.

The shot above BTW is inside St. Stephen's Cathedral in Passau, Germany. That organ is considered the largest organ of the world inside a church, with 17,974 pipes.

 

[Michael Guzzi]

And some more:

Judging from the cars at the parking lot, late 80's/early 90's.

 

[Terry Breedlove]

I have a exposed 620 roll I found in an old Kodak Brownie camera. I need to have it processed might be interesting.

 

[Chan Tran]

I wonder what kind of right do we have on those photos we bought as either negatives or slides at estate sales?

 

[Rosewater]

I have been hunting and collecting old exposed film rolls for years and developing them to reveal their stories. It's part of my Lost Exposures project which you can read about here: Dead Link Removed
No matter how old the images are, there is a timelessness about the people's behaviour, their connection to family, their sense of place and the desire to preserve memories. It's so beautiful to witness.

 

[Wallendo]

I wonder what kind of right do we have on those photos we bought as either negatives or slides at estate sales?

In the US, copyright varies with the age of the photo. Obviously very old photos are in the public domain.
For more recent images the copyright belongs to the original photographer, but, if these are picked up at a yard sale or estate sale, the copyright has been abandoned and the images are safe to use, but there is always an outside chance an heir of the photographer could come after you.
The likeness of an individual in a photo belongs to that individual unless there is a model release (unlikely for found negatives).
Purchasing a negative or print does not confer any copyrights to the purchaser unless specifically stated. On the other hand, most of these were taken by shutterbugs, not professionals, and unless embarrassing photos are present, you should have no legal issues using these photos (if the photographer is dead and the family sold the negatives, it would be extremely hard to prove ownership.

I always develop film left in cameras I buy, hoping to find a photo of Elvis having lunch with Bigfoot and Marilyn Monroe, but most of them have come out fogged.

 

[Neil Grant]

I have been hunting and collecting old exposed film rolls for years and developing them to reveal their stories. It's part of my Lost Exposures project which you can read about here: Dead Link Removed
No matter how old the images are, there is a timelessness about the people's behaviour, their connection to family, their sense of place and the desire to preserve memories. It's so beautiful to witness. View attachment 185432 View attachment 185433 View attachment 185434

...probably quite unremarkable at the time, but this unwitting 'testimony' becomes a valuable record. What survives a photographers death is quite haphazard with variable effort to 'secure' imagery for the future. I quite recently digitised a set of flea-market bw negs - some most interestingly of pre ww2 Germany in the town of Rothenberg. I think they were passed on to the town archivist.

 

[rwjr]

i'll have to start collecting old negatives