rediscovered.

So a few years back, my parents come home from an antique shop with several heavy cases of what I thought was old 4x5 film. Well, they were negatives—but they were much more than that.

So let's go way back, shall we? Remember life before digital? Remember FILM?

For those who don't know, George Eastman invented film as we know it (the floppy celluloid stuff) just before the turn of the 20th Century. Before that, photographs were made other surfaces: Paper, Tin (and other metals), as well as glass. Yes, glass negs—which they hand-painted emulsion onto, I might add. And then placed a single plate in a camera that weighed around 20 pounds, exposed it for a few seconds, then hand processed the plate.

(And I heard my mother complaining last night about her "cumbersome" Nikon SLR, which weighs in at a whopping 8 ounces, is fully automated, and requires no dark cloth. It's okay, mother dear--we're all spoiled--and your composition has improved tremendously over the past couple of years).

I know you're all not obsessed as I am, but I hope this interests you. We owe more to the pioneers of photography than you can possibly imagine. Especially George Eastman, who was a pure genius: he brought photography to the masses. He was the IKEA of photography (man, I can plug Scandinavian Modernism in amazing ways). But not even IKEA compares to the revolution he created. Life as we know it—as we record it—is almost solely thanks to him.

Anyway, my parents showed up with boxes of these Glass Negatives. There were dozens in each box, so I now have hundreds of these photographs.

For the first time (3 years later), I decided to photograph one and then invert it to make a positive. Here's the neg:


And here's the positive:



Wicked. Just wicked. I chose that neg because the guy looked intriguing, but was absolutely taken aback when I converted it. Intriguing is an understatement.

So now I am considering a project of reproducing a few dozen of these. I would call it something like "anonymity" (though I hope I can get more creative than that), because these are among the most anonymous people I've ever seen. Women, children, businessmen, and random ruffians like the man above. Who were they? We'll never know, but that doesn't matter. I think their spirit speaks through the images.

They are ghostly, empty plates of glass to hold in my hand, but to see them as above adds substance and depth to the image and the person. I love it.

Not to mention the medium. I would die to have that photographer's camera, with all that wonderful fall-off and lens distortion. An old Cooke, I reckon.

Anyway, that's one of the things I'm doing tonight, as well as being obsessed with Roger Deakins, who is nominated for TWO Academy Awards for his work photographing No Country For Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James. What brilliance.

wesman.