Revisiting Old Negatives

I recently found a reason to search out some decades old negatives. While going through those old files, I came upon a few which, for one reason or another, I had never printed (or never printed successfully). I pulled a few, and made some prints. They came out great. For one in particular, I attribute it to being a much better printer than I was back then. For others, I think they held my interest when I shot them, but lost it when I went to print (or others from the series seemed to work better at the time). In any event, the passage of time had rekindled my interest. A few had been images I had printed, and sold, numerous times, which made me come close to hating printing them. Years later, I'm seeing them in a different light, and they appeared as old friends.
Does anyone else revisit old work? If so, what do you glean from it? Do you see it as a way to gauge your progress, and/or your artistic evolution? Or, do you see your very old work as a part of your past, and best left there?
For me, this experience has me determined to find a way to add "vintage days" into my darkroom routine.

A few, i have hundreds that I have never even seen all sitting in folders, I never really enjoyed printing them but I can easily pick out unseen 20 year plus old negatives that remind me of why I love photography. I was shocked to see a box of prints that I had printed in 1993 that my daughter found,I could not believe how good I was in the darkroom because as of 2017 I am completely crap at it, lost my mojo and enthusiasm for the darkroom but I am trying but sadly it ain't working for me anymore.

I've been scanning all of my old negatives. I was surprised to see that in 1973, I was in the forefront of the New Topographics movement, which I didn't hear of until about a decade ago.

One of the great joys (there are many, even if we remove those that aren't good for one's health in old age) is one has ample free time to rethink, replan, revisit and redo a great variety of things, many of them photographic.

In my case, I find I'm less interested in making field trips to shoot - especially so as I realise I would be revisiting almost all the places I went to in the past and, essentially, reshooting most of what I saw and photographed then. Deja vu. Wasted time, in many cases. So I dither and delay and obfuscate, well knowing I will probably never get around to it. Too many new places to go to and shoot fresh.

On the other hand, darkroom time has become far more interesting. I have tens of thousands of old negatives and slides to look through, sort, caption, keyword and generally make improved prints from those I made in the 1980s and 1990s when I tended to print more hurriedly, and consequently took less time to evaluate and fine-tune the contrast in my prints.

Much like Juan (see #3), I too am making interesting discoveries as I pore thru old archival negative files and slide boxes.

In the 1990s I got interested in architectural photography and changed my entire way of shooting. An interesting discovery in looking at my older images (I began shooting as a teenager in the early '60s and have somehow miraculously kept all my negatives, which I nowadays fondly refer to as "my photographic archives") is that I was at the forefront of a revival in Eastern Canada of the Old Pictorial Style, altho I didn't realise this at the time. Even way back then I had an interest in architecture and buildings and am finding I was already documenting and recording many structures, mostly old French Canadian barns and late 1800s examples of the 'Horrible Gothic' styles so beloved of British Imperialists, to mention but two, almost all of which have now vanished into oblivion. So the foundations of my later becoming a design architect had been awakened even decades before. An interesting revelation for me.

A special "find" was two negative sleeves of black-and-white images taken in 1963 of my late grandfather, who passed away in 1993 at age 100, and my favorite cousin, who was then 19 (he is now 73), making maple syrup at the old "sugar shack" on the family farm. Many memories of my early teen years (I was 15 at the time ,I had a Yashica D TLR and a cheap Sekonic exposure meter, and I shot Kodak Verichrome Pan, if anyone cares to know the "technicals") came flooding back as I took out the negatives, still in almost perfect condition, and perused them on my light table. At that long ago time in my life I was a correspondent for two provincial daily newspapers and I had plans to write a feature article on maple syrup production on small farms in New Brunswick (Canada), of course illustrated with the images I took, but several of my aunts took exception to this plan and caused such an uproar that my parents demanded I not publish the shots. Irritated by this, I announced to the family that no-one would ever see those images. No-one ever has. Now, half a century land four years ater, I still have the original negatives, and I intend to print them and mount them in small books for family members to enjoy. Unfortunately, my grandfather, my mother and all the trouble making aunts will never see them, as they have all passed on. Now I regret all that, but I have the consolation of knowing the "wheel" has now turned its full circle, and I will finally be able to right my bad decision and move on. A small event, but significant. Such is life.

The Velveeta landscapes I was so happily shooting even back in 1962, are all being set aside in a special folder, for future perusal and... well, I'm not sure what. But I do intend to keep them, as cheesy as they were.

I look on my retirement years as a time for reviewing and learning, and am finding much to ponder in my old images. One goal is to see if Pictorial evolved into Architectural. Also, I hope, to find uses for them.

Many new discoveries. Old dogs. New tricks.

Yes, I too revisit old negatives. In one case I finally got around to making a print. The subject was an old abandoned country church. The next day I noticed that a face was peering out from one of the windows. A squatter or a ghost? Who knows. I never noticed it when I took the picture.

I scanned every negative I ever shot a few years ago. Put them all in Lightroom. I got in the habit of scanning everything as I developed it about 2009 I think which quickly made me realize it would be good to do everything. In 2012 I decided to do it. It took me a couple months of spending all my free time scanning, something like 40,000 scans, but now everything is in the computer. In the process I found a whole bunch of old images that I liked but never looked at when I shot them. Even five years later, I haven't looked at everything. I still find some nice images. The gallery here is where I upload the found images.

hi eddie

i know what you mean ! some of my best negatives and prints have been things i overlooked
when i first went over the film or contact sheet. they didn't do it for me then, and at the time
i edited the images and made the important decisions i didn't get it and now 10, 20 or 30 years later
i look through the negatives and i understand a bit better.
john

Scanning, another mind numbing process that makes me want to reach for that piece of rope....