ultimate fate of your negatives

[lemastre]

After spending a great deal of time over 40 years creating

negatives and prints, I've amassed sizable files of them. Now I

must consider disposing of everything. I hate to think of

consigning 40 years of negatives to the landfill. Does anyone

have a less apocalyptic suggestion? My local library is

interested in about 1000 rolls of negatives having to do with

theatrical activities, but this accounts for less than 20 percent of

my files.

[jim_appleyard]

Children? Grandchildren? Other reletives? A museum? A college or high school photo class? (dread the thought tho'); anyplace but the dump, what a waste!

[bj_bignell]

If you have any pictures that depict your city or province/state, check to see if the city or province/state archives are interested. Anything that shows the area, and is dated, would probably be welcomed.

[kbreak]

I think the Getty has the largest photo collection on Earth.<BR><BR>

I would sure ask them, they probably get asked that every other day.

[john_h.1]

"I must consider disposing of everything."

 

Why?

[skygzr]

It's probably smart that you decide their fate. Your eventual heirs, whatever their good intentions, probably won't have the same emotional investment, UNLESS there's a photographer in the family.

 

Or, you could have a grand bonfire, like Brett Weston did.

[mb81]

Funny that you bring this up. I am currently restoring hundreds of negatives that I found in an antique shop. all 4x5 and 8x10 negs from very early in the century. All of these seem to be very nice photos from the same photographer of his family etc.

The photos will eventually be published in a monograph, but I feel odd taking money (even though I am restoring the negs and printing them) from photos that i didnt take and of a family long gone as far as I know.

 

My point is that if you get rid of these negs, who knows what will happen to them, some guy like me could come along in 100 years, print them and make money from them.

 

Why are you getting rid of them anyway? I would take the time to split them all up and donate them accordingly.

[vaantique]

If there are any of electrical subjects (transformers, power lines old street cars, ect) or of anything related to photography as a subject you can send them to me! If you need me to I will pay the postage.

[lemastre]

Your various suggestions are appreciated. Aside from the nearly

thousand rolls of rehearsal shots I will send to the library, the

majority of my negatives are theatrical portraits or head shots,

whose subjects are long gone from my ken. I would give the

negatives to the subjects, but I have no idea where they are. The

shots would be of only nostalgic value, since they've long since

passed their use-by dates, which is about two years for a head

shot. I'm beginning to see that there's really no excuse for

agonizing over these negatives, since they certainly have no

commercial value. If I were doing my life over, I'd probably give

my subjects their negs as soon as the first batch of prints was

made. My experience with that, however, was that subjects lose

the negs on their way to L.A. or just in moving across town and

then have to hope that I can provide another print without a neg.

 

Considering the onslaught of digital photography, we may find

that in a few years film negatives will have value solely for their

technological features. Maybe I need to be contacting antique

dealers.

[mikeseb]

Is there any value of the silver in the negatives? Is it economical to recover it? Maybe this is an option, sad though it would be.

 

Like the others, I hate to think of such a trove, no matter how worthless they seem to you now, being consigned to a landfill or barbecue grill.

 

It just seems a shame somehow to throw away a life's work.

 

Best of luck with whatever decision you make.