Negativity

Pop a cork and light up a Churchill! We’ve been on Rusty Hinge Road for 10 years! In the early months of our residency, as the sawdust levels began to subside and the patina of the previous tenants faded away, I began to collect ephemera related to my new home town. Just post cards at first. In those early days, when EBAY was just a little more than an idea, I could win auctions without much competition: two dollars here, five dollars there, before long I had quite a collection. Then it was on to pottery and books, anything even vaguely related to my zip code was fair game. I would seek it out, bid on it, and for a while, there was a fairly steady stream of envelopes, padded bags and boxes arriving at my door.

Once I figured out how to do it, I set up my EBAY account to run automatic searches specific to my desires. Borselino hats is one of my favorites, as are Volvo parts and antique banjos. The one I get every day centers on items related to my home town.


Not too long ago, I received an EBAY notification offering old photographic negatives that were alleged to have been snapped by a renowned local WPA muralist. It promised images of street scenes (I like those), old cars (sign me up) and people (I’m into people).



I won the lot for $3.95 plus postage and a week later I was running 4X5 negatives through my scanner. As anticipated, my computer screen delivered photos of old houses and cars and old-fashioned people in a 1930s back yards, sipping lemonade and pretty much doing what we modern folks do on a summer’s day (without the technological gizmos).




One of the things I began to do with my postcard collection was to get in the Toyota and drive to the various locations pictured in my 80-year-old images, with the idea of replicating the exact image as it looks today. I had some success with this, but it often required some research, since occasionally streets are renamed and in some cases entire neighborhoods have been paved over in favor of a commercial enterprise. My newly acquired negatives sparked a renewal of this interest, especially since I had the name of the photographer and some possible landmarks I could use to identify the scenes I now had on my hard drive.

I googled the artist with limited success, save for a whole lot of images of his fine murals which are still on display in many local government buildings. My next step was to go to the local library to search the town directories.

After finding a “Jim Rockford” parking spot in front of the library, I walked in the door and practically knocked over Gilbert, the unofficial town historian. I had spent many hours in various places listening to Gilbert rattle off his boundless knowledge of local lore and on this particular day, I merely mentioned the name of the muralist I was researching and Gilbert was rattling off reams of valuable information that was priceless for my research. He gave me so much data that I decided not to pursue the reference desk for the old directories and set out to photograph modern digital versions of the vintage images that I now owned.



In what I thought was a delightfully karmic twist, the address Gilbert sent me to happened to be right around the corner from my property at Rusty Hinge Road. The house was one with which I was quite familiar. Gilbert’s description of how the artist’s family used the property all made sense, but I instinctively felt that it was not the one depicted in my photos.




I won another EBAY auction of negatives of identical description and while I was waiting for them to arrive, I returned to the library to do more research on the photographer. I found three different addresses from three different decades. My subject had moved several times. From the driver’s seat of the Toyota, I took three new photos, I also discovered that, unfortunately, one of the locations was now a more modern strip mall.

Maybe one of these properties could have been the location of the back yard in my photos. I continued to poke around and email Gilbert while I watched the mail for the new (old) negatives.
In a week, I was scanning the new material. There were a series of interior shots, taken around a Christmas dinner table, and a few others of folks sitting on a back porch and then, hallelujah, one of the properties I had photographed came up, exactly as my modern photograph had captured it.

I get an immense sense of satisfaction I get when I am able to bring the past to the present. When I am able to replicate a shot that had been taken before my father was born and study the two images side by side, every little detail and grain silently tells the story of the passing decades. I posted these images to the internet in a photosharing site where I have found neighbors with similar interests. I explained what I was doing and revealed my sources. There was some response and I was given some useful suggestions.

More negatives came up on EBAY the next day, and some of the images look like they might contain a few shots of the house around the corner.

I put in my bid and rubbed my hands together in anticipation. Lo and behold, at the last minute, I was outbid! Drat! Now someone out there has “my” negatives!

I know where you live!