In Memoriam: What to do with a dead man's film?

Gelatin-silver photograph on Ultrafine Silver Eagle VC FB photographic paper, image size 16.4cm X 21.3cm, from a 4x5 Tri-X Pan Professional negative exposed in a Tachihara 45GF double extension field view camera fitted with a 160mm f4 Wollaston Meniscus soft-focus lens and a #25 red filter.

My photographer friend Sparky died after a long long illness and some of his equipment passed into my hands. There were many film holders that he had loaded with Tri-X Pan Professional fifteen years previously but could not expose. The film had corroded through the passage of years but I took it to those places where we had walked with our cameras in times past.

I used the soft focus lens to make an image with an air of strangeness; of this world and yet not of it. The optical signature is strong and overwrites the random defects in the film. The art deco tree is sadly eloquent as it frames the boatmen pushing away from the shore of the lake. The far shore is distant and indistinct; as far shores often are.

This Past Imperfect exposure is of a style Sparky would appreciate and it may offer a quiet memorial to his vision.

So impressive, Maris. But can you explain the white droplets. Are they part of the film deterioration or actual decoration on the tree?

Asher

The white dots in the positive are black dots in the negative.

Film dies, as all things do, either suddenly, say by accidental exposure to a flood of light, or gradually and piecemeal through the attrition of age. Some few of the silver halide crystals in a film emulsion have sensitivity specks that are on a "hair trigger" and will go off through random thermal effects, ionising radiation, mechanical stress, and chemical contamination. I suspect that is what has happened with this ancient and neglected film.

The white dots could be tears, the lake could be the Styx, the boatmen could be Charon and his pal, and the far shore Hades. Of course it isn't so but one could think it.

Maris Rusis said:

The white dots in the positive are black dots in the negative.

Film dies, as all things do, either suddenly, say by accidental exposure to a flood of light, or gradually and piecemeal through the attrition of age. Some few of the silver halide crystals in a film emulsion have sensitivity specks that are on a "hair trigger" and will go off through random thermal effects, ionising radiation, mechanical stress, and chemical contamination. I suspect that is what has happened with this ancient and neglected film.

The white dots could be tears, the lake could be the Styx, the boatmen could be Charon and his pal, and the far shore Hades. Of course it isn't so but one could think it.

Click to expand...

The white dots are poetic! Radiation would be scattered randomly over the entire surface. So this is more likely, as you suggest, due to some chemical impurity or high sensitivity specs that just got their rocks off at some environmental event.

It's not even random beauty, rather it's some happenstance local difference in the emulsion, at the time of manufacture, some unimportant local congregations in distribution that lay in wait for the picture of the tree. Happenstance can be sneaky and very creative!

This makes an apt memorial picture.

Asher