[Photographic] memory loss

 Photography is a strange beast in my life. How I ended up getting into it in the first place, was my very first experience of losing photographs. When I was 11 years old, I was lucky enough to attend the Tim Hortons children's camp in beautiful Kananaskis Alberta. It was truly an experience of a lifetime. Memories so grandiose, they shaped the path of the rest of my life. I took with me a 110 film camera. It was 1996.

I took the full roll of pictures, saving one for the flight back home. Or so I thought. After waiting the two weeks for my photos to return from processing, I was all but devastated to realize that there was some sort of a shutter problem. Only the first two pictures on the roll had taken, and the rest were blank. I promised myself I would one day have a proper camera, and return to the mountains. Boy did I ever...

I've experienced some other unfortunate mishaps throughout my photography 'career'. Accidentally exposing an entire roll of film from a ceremony, and when digital first came about I'd unintentionally deleted an entire photo shoot for a Big Time Magazine that involved a bunch of people from a bunch of places getting together. There is nothing I could do but redo it. I will never forget that.



A couple years ago my folks drove all the way out here from back east with all my totes of Photographs & Memories. One big tote in particular had my entire collection of negatives from over the years. The black and white that I developed by hand in the darkroom, the medium format film, years and years and hundreds.. no thousands of still images in their raw form. As well as *all* of my original prints. When they first arrived, I opened them up to take a quick look through, and closed the tote again forever. Until the other day.

It was a dear friend's birthday shortly ago. One of my earliest friends, one that shares the same love and appreciation for photography as I. A friend that stood next to me in that darkroom, that was in so many of those photographs from the years passed. Her birthday inspired me to finally open the box. I unburied it from the stack of totes still awaiting their sorting day, and dragged it out into the light. I opened the lid, and was immediately horrified.

It looked as though someone had opened the lid, poured a bucket of water into the tote, and closed it to let it mold over for the next couple few years. Several different colours of mold at that. Mostly emanating from the darkroom bag that held the negatives. How in the... I have no idea. They'd been in there for easily a decade or more and were fine. Condensation? Some sort of leak? Many of the photographs still in envelopes were stuck together, negatives too. Soggy in their sleeves. I stared dumbfounded for a moment, and then immediately started rifling the moldy envelopes into the trash.

Some of the photos that were on top of the stack of little albums made it out mostly unscathed. And of course the album on top was the oldest one, with said dear friend in the picture. Mission accomplished, at least.. I did my best to take all the moldy bits out of the tote and set it aside. I will at some point, maybe even in the next few weeks, make an attempt to salvage some of the wreckage. Truth be told, having to one day soon deal with these totes has been stressing me out a little. And shockingly, I'm not as devastated as I thought I would be. 

I often wonder why we so value the mementos. Tidbits of the past- we're the only species that seems to hold on to them so. I have thought several times since I moved here that I should have kept my library, craft supplies, paints and useful things that I gave away, and instead given away all of the memorabilia. But that's not what happened. And it's all here, still waiting for me...