In November 2015, my mom came up with some old photos of my deceased grandfather, which were negatives printed on film. She said that she had asked several photography studios if it was possible to get normal prints from the printed negatives, but the answer was always no. As those were some of the only photographs left of him, she had kept all of them with a hope. Years after, it was my turn to try. The process to get some decent prints and move my mom to tears was ever so easy.
The photos were shot during my grandfather’s mandatory military service in Turkey. Assuming that he was born in 1928, the photos should have taken in the 1940s. As my mom and aunts told me, my grandfather and his fellow soldiers only had a chance to have their photos taken a few times, and due to financial impossibilities, they got limited copies from the photographer. And, after they got the photos, they cast lots for the remaining photos, and my grandfather could only get the printed negatives instead of the original prints.
These prints, which were some of the stuff left from my grandpa, were really important to my mother. She lost him at an early age and has kept them in the hope of recovering the original images one day. I never met my grandfather. My mom was 22 when he died from cancer at the age of 54, and I only saw a few photos of him.
It was the first time I saw these negative prints. Actually, I never saw a film photographer printing the negatives, and I have no idea why this photographer did so. After a short online search, I saw some similar prints, but I couldn’t find any information why some photos were kept this way.
Years later, I created a digital contact sheet to restore all the photos.
Fortunately, the prints were kept well in an album, and I used an Epson V55 flatbed scanner for scanning and transferring the images to Photoshop. With just one click, the photos became real! I just pressed "Command + I" to invert the colors in Photoshop, and all the images came real as black and white photos, showing my grandfather and his friends in their early 20s. Approximately 60 years later, these photos were printed properly and added as the most valuable photos in our family album.
"Hatira" means "memory" in Turkish, and that kind of backdrop was used in most photo shoots of the time.
The only photograph left from my grandfather's youth.
Awesome! It's stuff like this that makes me worry for the collective memory of our society, since everything is digital now. It feels like we are just waiting for a mass hard drive failure and poof go the memories.
all we need is printers Hans :)
Haha. We've got the printers. We just need the motivation to print. Facebook has become the de facto photo album for a lot of families out there, myself included. Just have to get off my ass and print some photos!
Although I could see the practicality of these paper negs during those times, I'm surprised your mom couldn't find a lab that would process them in modern pre-digital times. In my photo-optical days I would've thrown them up on a copy camera (I used to work with a giant Robertson, but any copy camera setup would do) and shot transparency film, B&W or color, and printed from them. It would be a relatively straightforward operation.
Great advice. Haven't heard of MDisc before. Although their promovideo is a little bit over the top. All these tears and the sad music.
Did you ever find out why they were printed this way to begin with, or why photography studios said they couldn't fix this???
Super awesome that you were able to though. Technology ftw
Thanks Chris, actually I still couldn't find, but I think these used to be given to clients instead of the original films. Also, photography studios didn't want to deal I guess.
I'm guessing the studios he contacted didn't have anyone with any darkroom experience. I recall having a student who had never heard of an enlarger.
I remember back in 1983 (and probably for decades before) the street photogs in Mexico would photograph a negative print to invert it so they could provide tourists with multiple copies of a print without the need for a darkroom. I'm guessing something similar was going on here.
That makes sense Matt, thanks!
I am just guessing here without any research, but if you take a picture of negative you will make positive slide...
Or maybe pictures were taken on paper, not on film...
Maybe there is a lost and forgotten step to film..or prints were to expensive at the time...time travelers told them about photoshop.
Possibly during the war film could be inaccessible. Reversal(or reversing) process was known for sure, so the positive could simply be lost.
Pete you should check out the npr article that Hidenori Inagaki shared in the comment below ;)
These negatives or dupes could've been digitized with a macro lens and a light box and inverted in Photoshop. Shooting with a camera potentially provides greater latitude than a scanner which doesn't capture in RAW nor does it allow for quick bracketing for HDR of said negatives.
If the negatives are common print sizes, my hunch is they were made for contact printing. This would allow for fast reproduction using the film similar to how film photographers made contact sheets. The production darkroom wouldn't need to focus an enlarger, nor would it require tying up an enlarger, which may have had so much work going through it that they needed a faster way for volume production. Perhaps this was a way to make prints very quickly. Of course this is many more steps but for high volume work it might not be too much trouble.
It could be one of 2 technique considering when it was taken.
First candidate was probably commonly used revived technique when cellulose film (incidentally it is one of excellent propellant explosive to fire bullet) were hard to come by in the most part of world during World War 2.
It is using contact sheet technique to create good duplicate, so paper negative can act as negative to create positive final print.
explanation of how to do it in modern paper actually can be found at ILFORD site, where essentially you use contact sheet technique to make quick positive duplicate which can be done it quickly if you are using large format camera box that have room to store all chemical in compartment there.
http://www.ilfordphoto.com/aboutus/page.asp?n=151
you use contact sheet exposure to reverse images which can be done using your large camera if it is set up that way.
This one is another candidate, if it was done by street photographer.
It is pretty straight forward, which is still practiced in remote third world locations. This one is shooting negative - negative.
It is also economical when resource are scarce, and film are hard to come by. And similar technique still survived till today in remote part of Asia or Latin America where due to its remote locations and poor infrastructure, setting up darkroom with enlarger is not necessary economically feasible.
Here is NPR article about similar box camera set up. There are few article about these type of street photography still in existence.
http://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/02/08/133111598/boxcameras
Hi, thank you for your comment! Probably that's why it is used printed negatives
I think the NPR article shows the way how these were shot
It was probably the most economical way of doing so by photographer during that time especially if your grandfather was stationed inland facing levant border. this technique is doable in harsh climate so.
I agree. it was hard to grasp what you meant by printed negative. it's similar to a pinhole negative made on photo paper. great feedback. I don't think my idea was quite on the mark.
actually your idea with all the other approaches make great sense Darren, thanks!
by the way I saw some similar photos exhibited as "printed negatives" that's why I used that term
another possibility is that these were a contact dupe made from a paper positive as a means to provide each subject a means to reproduce the image. in war, there's no telling who would make it home or if the images would even survive. If only my buddies Herny or John were around we might be able to come up with a concrete answer. I still like the film scarcity theory. imagine a war now where gigabytes and electricity become scarce!
"Printed Negative" is I think term coined around 50's 60's for modern pop art circle. Around that time, people made intentional negative images print, post card, etc. And it was bit of cliche for short period of time doing that. We still have artist printed negative exhibit once a while so, I guess it is not wrong of calling that if Negative were intended result.
I also thinks dupes is possible, but dupes on paper especially if it was duped from positive paper to negative paper tend to lose detail more, but that photo looks reasonable good for 70-80 years old photo on paper.
It can be made from B&W positive film to get sharp.
But, positive B&W are rare because it requires extra step in development with full fledge darkroom setup and extra nasty chemistry(which you can not dip your hand into like regular B&W chemical)... they are pretty hard to come by during Wartime even for neutral country.
I made good guess above ;)
Yes I think you did, shooting negative paper again by camera to get positive... is actually as old concept as calotype, and like NPR article or other one mentioned of Mexico... it still practice in some part of world as commercial craft though it is dying craft.
It is nice idea to visit for fine art photography purpose though, I sure want to build big camera using paper negative when I have time, money and space to store that thing ;)
Down side of it is, these paper takes forever to expose. I think I remember some discussion in forum saying it is essentially close to ISO10 or less in the term of film even though paper is rated otherwise for darkroom...
So, it will requires exposure time takes few sec even under bright desert sun. But is is still doable I think.
So you're making a contact positive from the paper neg? That would expose the neg's paper fiber texture to the positive as well. Rather odd way of going about it.
Method is as old as history of modern photography... back to when Calotype was invented.
So, yes, you will expose fiber and everything on duplicate. Each successive duplicate if attempted will be definitely softer and more paint like look because of this.
Restoring old photos was some of the most rewarding work I've ever done. Not always financial rewards, but lots of tears and thanks.