Re: later looks

[Oddmund Garvik <garvik@serveur.interliger.fr>]

Ted wrote:

"1/ Never throw any material away you might not be too happy with today..."

"2/  Store negatives very carefully..."


You can never be too careful! Especially when you are moving, or travelling.

I divide my "career" in two periods, before 1985 and after. When I moved to
France that year, all my belongings disappeared, burned, among other
things, books, cameras, lab equipment, and several thousand negatives and
prints. I have never really recovered from this event, just found a way of
living with it. It opened my eyes with regard to the relative unimportance
of things, but also with regard to taking care of the essential. I still
have some of the images in my brain, but it is difficult to share them. It
is impossible to remake any of them, so that is not even a project. I
should like to return to some of the places though. Sixteen months in
Lebanon during the civil war, and Israeli invasion is rather difficult to
bring back. Also the hunger catastrophe in South Sudan in 1982-83. Those
images are among the ones I miss most of all.

I started looking for negatives and prints left around during the years,
but didn't find many. The most interesting discovery was some of my first
pictures at the age of 13-14. There must have been about 50 negatives, 6x9,
made with a Super Ikonta or a Voigtlaender. I don't remember. I spent
several days in the darkroom rediscovering the "world" as it once was. It
was amazing to see all those forgotten scenes reappear in the dark.

I have become rather maniac about keeping, taking care of, and stocking
negatives after this. I don't throw away any! All of them are documents,
even if not all of them are interesting, or "good" at the moment. I think I
have said it before: images are like wine, they are getting better with the
time. Don't waste your memory!

Oddmund