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These “shoebox negatives” will take you on an emotional journey to 1930s Chicago

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Many years ago, Joan Tortorici Ruppert’s mother handed her a box full of negatives. You see, Joan’s father was an avid photographer, and Joan began to be interested in it too. So, her mom wanted her to have these photos that he’d taken and developed back in the late 1930s.

Joan took this “time capsule” and carefully scanned all the photos. She did it all without a lightbox, enlarger or a scanner, but she came up with a DIY approach that let her quickly cull through hundreds of negatives. And finally, she ended up with an admirable collection of black and white photos that show life as it was in pre-war Chicago.

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Police are trying to reunite this camera with its owner – Do you recognise them?

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Posts like these have become fairly common the last couple of years. A lost GoPro here, a missing DSLR there. And we all want to do what we can to help (hence this post). But this has to be the most hilarious attempt to reunite a camera with its owner that I’ve seen. Why? Because all of the faces are obscured. It seems that they were blurred by the Police themselves, but it’s going to make identifying them kind of tricky.

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Photographer develops a roll of film from 1929 camera and discovers forgotten portraits

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Sometimes photographers find real gems among the vintage cameras and lenses. Dutch photographer Martijn van Oers found an original Zeiss Ikon 520/2 in a second-hand store, dating from around 1929. The folding medium-format camera had a roll of film inside, with the word EXPOSÉ on it. It got him intrigued, and he decided to develop the film and see if he can get something out of it.

He contacted a friend Johan Holleman, who has been into film photography and film developing for the most of his life. Johan warned him that the chances were slim to recover the images, considering that the film was produced between the 1940s and 1970s. However, after the careful developing process – the photos were there! It turned out that the film was nearly 70 years old, and it contained the portraits Martijn and Johan retrieved after all this time.

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Can You Help Locate The Photographer Of These Vintage Negatives Recently Found In A Thrift Store?

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A Richmond, Virginia based photographer, Meagan Abell, made a truly delightful discovery while browsing the shelves of a local thrift store. Sitting there on one of the racks, Abell found a box of old photographs, which also happened to contain four sets of medium format negatives. Like any good photography enthusiast would do, she purchased the box and brought it home so she could scan the negatives.

Much to her (and our) delight, the images on the negatives turned out to be pretty stunning. At this point, I think it pretty much goes without saying that we need to know who took the photos so we can enjoy more of their work and get a little background info on the few images Abell has found.[Read More…]

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