500,000

 

 Sometime in the last couple of days, The New Found Photography went over 500,000 individual page views.  I have no idea if that's impressive or not, but just to mark the milestone, a repeat from my very first post. 

2500

 

This is my 2500th post. As I've written before, I didn't start The New Found Photography because I was desperate to share my old photo collection with the world but because I couldn't figure out any other way to be able to see it myself without having to root around in dozens of unorganized boxes. So, this is from my very first post from 2009. I picked up some glass negatives at a small antique store in Washington state and hand-printed them myself. It's the dream of every photo collector to find a complete set of photos from an undiscovered talent. Think Vivian Mier. The antique dealer who sold me these negatives had purchased a collection of negs from an estate in Montana and judging by the quality of the few I purchased, perhaps he had run across an important photographer, but sadly decided to break-up the collection and sell them for $5.00 each. 

200,000

Sometime during the wee hours of this morning, The New Found Photography went over 200,000 unique page views.  These three photographs started things off.  I found the original glass negatives at an antique store in Washington state.  The seller had picked up hundreds of negatives from an estate sale in Montana, and decided to sell them off individually.  By the time I found these, the collection had been pretty much picked over.  I think it's the  dream of every photo collector to find a secret cache of photos from an unknown, yet talented photographer.  Sadly, with this lot broken up, and sold off,  we'll never know what the complete archive had to offer.

Oh, and I hand printed them back when I was still working in a photo lab.

Montana Glass Negatives

One of the reasons that I hate antique dealers is that they break up collections of photographs to increase their profits. I purchased these images in Montana. It's kind of the dream of all photo collectors to discover a large collection of images from an unknown, though clearly, talented photographer. Looking at this group of images, I think I may have found one, but with only a handful of the negatives still left together, we'll never know. I think the image of the farm family one of the strongest photographs I've ever seen. The portraits of the cowboy and beekeeper are amazing. I showed these to a movie costumer who dated the clothing to the late 19th to early 20th century. Because there is no mother in the farm scene, I think the photographer might have been the mother, making her glass negaties, at home, in the kitchen. Click on images to see them in a larger window.

I used to work in a photo lab where I had access to an 8x10 enlarger. I was able to use it to make high quality blow-ups. These images were made directly from the negatives, rather than copy negs made from contact prints.